


Boundaries

by NotaDogWarden



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Smut, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, Some Canon, University
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:53:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 56,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotaDogWarden/pseuds/NotaDogWarden
Summary: Patsy and Delia are both professors. They don't apparently hit it off at first when they meet, but their meeting is told via flashback and the narrative of the fic is immediately interwoven with glimpses of the present day, when they are hitting it off. ;) This is mostly Modern AU, but a major canon twist will make an appearance starting in Chapter 5...





	1. The Elevator

They didn’t mean for it to happen this way—in the elevator, on the way to a faculty meeting. They didn’t mean for it to happen at all. It was careless and stupid. If anyone so much as suspected there was something going on between them, it would compromise both of their reputations. 

Dr. Mount, chair of the department and a fully promoted Professor of English, and Dr. Busby, a faculty member in the same department in her first year on the tenure track at one of the most prestigious universities in the States, were locked in an embrace that neither anticipated—though perhaps they should have. The tension between them had been building for months, and it had just been a matter of time before something punctured their painful-at-times façade of professionalism and called forth all of their repressed desire and longing.

 

_Not here. Not here. Not now. Shit. No, don’t stop._

 

Things had not started off like this for them. When Dr. Busby joined the faculty at the start of the academic year and met Dr. Mount for the first time, there had been tension of sorts at that meeting, but it had not ended well. Though they had both gone into the meeting with only positive expectations of the other, by the end, Dr. Busby had left with the distinct sense that their interaction that day predicted quite the opposite of the compromising, intensely passionate position they currently found themselves in. 

Busby had been hired by the former department chair who had resigned suddenly in the intervening summer after sexual harassment allegations had been formally filed by a graduate student. As one of the most accomplished members of the department, Dr. Mount had generously agreed to step in as department chair on short notice. Though she had been on sabbatical when Dr. Busby was hired and so had not so much as passed her in the hall during her campus visit, Dr. Mount had heard great things from others who had met her…the new junior colleague was supposedly bright, clever, and enthusiastic about her work. By all accounts, she promised to make a great contribution to the department.

Dr. Busby also knew of Dr. Mount well before meeting her--her reputation as a scholar was well-established. Known as a dynamic and engaging professor who often chose compelling and edgy subjects to write about and teach in her classes, Dr. Mount had several books out, was highly sought after as a speaker, and was followed by tens of thousands on Twitter. She had risen swiftly through all of her promotions and had achieved the rank of Full Professor in an almost unheard of 8 years after completing her graduate work. She was the model of an accomplished, progressive scholar with a growing public reputation and yet was also known for being down-to-earth and incredibly generous with her time. She was always willing to help those less advanced than she. Graduate students loved her, and her advisees had the highest placement rate of any in the department. 

In spite of her reputation for being generous with her time and attention as a mentor and teacher, however, Dr. Mount was not known for her warmth and could be a bit difficult to get to know personally. She was almost always serious and intense about the subject before her—no matter what that was—and efficient in her choice of words. As a result, it was widely thought that one always knew exactly where one stood with Dr. Mount. Though she had never been known to have a long-term partner, rumors circulated about her being highly sought after at parties and conferences. What she lacked in casual warmth, for most people, she made up for in other ways. It was no secret that she was attractive and poised—a single glance in her direction gave that away—but she was also, word had it, as adept behind closed doors as she was behind a podium giving a lecture on Rita Mae Brown. Everyone, it seemed, either wanted to _be_ Dr. Mount or _be with_ her—sometimes both. 

 

_Just. Yes. Please. Please. Don’t stop, Delia thought to herself. She was dizzy and felt her legs getting weak._

 

Dr. Mount was admired by most, envied by many, and rooms often spontaneously quieted when she entered. Her presence was palpable, compelling, charged, and exciting. To say that she was intimidating would grossly over-simplify and radically understate what it was like to be in her presence. It was not just her reputation as a scholar or behind closed doors, her edgy, political sense of humor that had earned her so many Twitter followers, her impossibly long legs, her confidence, her softly styled strawberry blond hair that always seemed both perfectly done up and yet just on the verge of falling about her shoulders….Dr. Mount had an energy about her that hardly anyone was immune to. 

In fact, though they had no chance of becoming involved with her—Dr. Mount was a proud and out lesbian and a leading scholar of lesbian narrative politics, male academics routinely (and annoyingly) hit on her. Perhaps it was because she tended to dress in a way that was considered extremely and conventionally feminine (form fitting short shifts and high heels at work, as a general rule). Perhaps this confused them, made them think they had a chance, made them think that maybe their progressive, modern sensibilities could convince her to make an exception for them. They could not.

 

_Delia couldn’t move if she wanted to. Both of them were breathless, though they hadn’t so much as kissed. Patsy held Delia firmly but tenderly from behind with her right arm—the other was straight out in front pressed against the inside of the elevator and held them in place about a foot from the wall. Pasty’s hot cheek and soft lips pressed against the warm spot right in front of Delia’s ear. Her breath there made Delia ache all over._

_God, she smelled so sweet, Patsy thought—like butter and honey and flowers. Her long, soft fingers slid another inch below the waist of Delia’s pants, pressed down on the smooth skin just inside her right hip bone. Her head and heart were both banging with the intensity of her desire._

_I. Oh god. This is... This is..._

 

Dr. Busby had not heard anything about the reason why Dr. Mount had become chair of the department at the end of the summer. Her new colleagues hadn’t wanted to reveal the dark controversy which had prompted it so soon after their new, enthusiastic colleague had arrived on campus. Not knowing any of the sordid details, Dr. Busby thought Dr. Mount’s becoming chair was a great development. Her new, senior colleague was well-respected, and having a woman as chair in this department was a welcome change in Busby’s mind. The former chair, Dr. McAdam, while he seemed kind enough, was not known for being the most progressive member of the department and Dr. Busby had been concerned this might make it harder for the department to modernize and get new courses approved—both of which she had lots of ideas about. 

 

_Oh god. Patsy's fingers moved lower still inside the waist of Delia's pants, grazing the side of Delia's hip, while her thumb lightly caressed the area where Delia's underwear met the top of her leg._

 

Dr. Busby couldn’t wait to share her ideas with the new chair, and in spite of being new to the department, she would share as soon as she had the opportunity. She was not at all shy about speaking her mind. She was one of those incredibly rare humans who was genuinely happy in her own skin, comfortable with the idea that our experiences of life are what we make of them. As a result, she rarely acted in ways that might be described as petty or competitive, except playfully so...as a way of poking and prodding those who seemed activated by such things and with those whom she hoped to develop a closeness of some kind.

 

_Suddenly, Delia spun around to face Patsy and rose to meet the taller woman's breath. She paused there, looking first at Patsy's lips and thinking about how they would feel against hers, what they would taste like. And then she looked up. Blue eyes found blue eyes and connected with an intensity neither of them had ever before experienced. And then, as if on cue, both their eyes narrowed as they smiled. Their systems flooded with oxytocin. Their skin tingled. Their hips pressed together._

__

__

_“Hi,” Delia said, as she reached behind her senior colleague and casually slipped her hand up the back of her shirt, spreading her fingers and pressing them against the soft warmth of Patsy's skin just beneath her bra strap...as if she had done it a thousand times before and it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do so. “Hi,” Patsy replied with a lopsided grin that made Delia want never to ever be anywhere else on earth._

 

It was an unusual and quite risky strategy for getting to know someone, but it had worked for her in most areas of her life. Dr. Busby was totally unafraid of asserting herself with even the most advanced and accomplished colleagues and acquaintances. Most people found the confidence with which she crossed such boundaries confusing—especially since she usually did so with such obvious delight, but most people also liked and appreciated it in a way they didn’t quite themselves understand. It just worked. 

…like with the stern, brusque Provost of the university at the conclusion of their interview during her campus visit, when he mentioned that a graduate student would be meeting Dr. Busby out front of the building to give her a walking tour of the campus before lunch…she had lightly punched him on the shoulder, teased him for being too important to bother with the tour himself, and then flashed a bright, cheeky, dimpled smile. He had been totally stunned by the gesture, but couldn’t help but smile back at her. Her good-naturedness was infectious.

 

_Delia broke away from Patsy’s beautiful, warm gaze, leaned in toward the lower side of Patsy’s cheek, and pressed her lips to her senior colleague’s warm neck. At this, Patsy arched her head back slightly and a soft breath escaped her throat. Delia lingered—lips softly and slowly exploring the thin skin Patsy had just exposed to her._

 

She had not been so lucky on the first day of term at their first official meeting, when Dr. Busby sat across from Dr. Mount’s desk in the department chair’s office. She had simply and good-naturedly meant to gently mock her senior colleague for being a superwoman of sorts (“Really, what can’t you do—there must be something!” she had impetuously chided, her cheeks rosy with excitement and optimism), and she fully expected Dr. Mount to warm to her as others so often did. She expected Dr. Mount to smile, even if just a little, if only to acknowledge the new colleague’s attempt to soften the awkwardness of a first meeting. Dr. Mount did not smile. 

Instead, she stood up, smoothed the front of her skirt with a quick, controlled sweep of her hands, extended her right hand to Dr. Busby for a firm handshake, and abruptly ended their meeting. “Best of luck to you,” Dr. Mount had said. And then she had motioned towards the door with her left hand, indicating it was time for Dr. Busby to leave.

 

_They were both consumed by the moment. And then, almost as abruptly as she had turned to face Patsy, Delia withdrew her hand from under the woman’s shirt, pushed her away gently and somewhat teasingly by the hips, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m afraid this is where we get off.”_

_The elevator bell rang. Red-faced and flustered, they both turned to face the opening door._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to add "outros" at the end of each chapter in the notes. These will be songs I would cue if the ff chapter were a radio or TV episode. I know it's a bit unorthodox for a fan fic, but I love it when TV shows do this in ways that are unexpected or interesting--sometimes adding humor or making me rethink elements of the episode, sometimes just providing an interesting "after burn" of sorts, sometimes providing a clue about an episode- or chapter-ending cliff-hanger--so I'm going to try it. 
> 
> I expect they'll come from a wide range of genres and occasionally (often? ;) be surprising tone-wise (I have eclectic taste in music). I won't say much--if anything--about them. I may quote a lyric or two if there is something there I want to draw attention to. Feel free to ask me about them in the comments if you are curious about my reasoning. 
> 
> Anyway, we'll see how it goes. If they don't work for you, please feel free to just ignore them. Now, without further ado...
> 
>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 1...Lauren Hill's "Everything Is Everything"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3_dOWYHS7I)  
> 


	2. The Faculty Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter explains a bit more about how the opening scene of Chapter 1 came to be and offers a glimpse into why the first official meeting ended as it did.

It wasn’t a particularly sexy incident that had prompted Drs. Busby and Mount’s heated elevator entanglement. In fact, it had been a decidedly awkward one. 

The morning of the department meeting, Dr. Mount had been running a bit late. She had just barely made it to campus in time to get to the meeting—which, of course, as chair of the department, she was expected to lead. Dressed in a short, black a-line skirt, a crisp white button-up blouse, and black round-toe pumps, hair in a sweepy bun, and carrying a large, leather tote…Dr. Mount had rushed into the elevator on the ground floor. 

Just one floor up, the elevator had stopped to pick up another passenger: a perky and smiling Dr. Busby whose eyes widened slightly when she saw Dr. Mount already in the elevator.

“Dr. Busby,” the senior colleague nodded—a simple, efficient acknowledgment. _As she said her junior colleague’s name and title, she felt a dull ache in her chest and thought to herself: Adorable. Delia... She blinked slowly to clear her mind._

“Morning!” Dr. Busby chirped back, clearly pleased with herself. She was slightly out of breath, her cheeks warm. She, too, had been running late and so had just completed the mile-long walk to school from the small cottage she was renting at record speed. 

Though a bit flustered by Dr. Mount’s presence, Dr. Busby tried to act casually unaffected. This was a disposition that did not come naturally for her but one she had been practicing the last several months as a way of coping with her feelings for Dr. Mount. She stepped into the elevator and swung around to press the “door close” button so that they could be on their way. 

As she turned her back to her senior colleague, the tread of her shoe caught awkwardly on the textured floor of the elevator, throwing her off balance and prompting her to drop her bag and fall backwards—legs twisting, arms flailing about—right, as it turned out, in the direction of Dr. Mount.

Always quick to notice when something is amiss, Dr. Mount braced herself immediately and prepared to intervene. Bending her knees to accommodate the smaller woman’s usual natural proximity to the ground, the senior colleague assumed a slight crouching position (knees together because of the narrowness of her skirt). She thrust both arms forward. 

Her quick thinking and coordination in this moment were a thing of beauty. As if she had been trained in such arts, when Dr. Busby reached her, Dr. Mount hooked her arms under her junior colleague’s and effectively halted her downward acceleration. And then things got awkward. 

Intending to help her junior colleague to her feet just as adeptly as she had caught her, Dr. Mount returned her long legs to their fully extended vertical position—propelling both herself and Dr. Busby up and forward. She almost pulled this off, except that in her zeal to restore order to the moment, Dr. Mount thrust a bit too hard.

To stop their forward momentum and to keep from unceremoniously slamming both of them into the front of the elevator, Dr. Mount put her left arm straight out and pressed it into the front wall of the elevator carriage—also, as it turned out, accidentally activating the emergency stop with the heel of her hand. 

As she did this, her right arm released from under Dr. Busby’s and closed securely around the front of her—just under her breasts—to keep her junior colleague from falling forward. 

When both were finally again standing on their own two feet, Patsy breathed a sigh of relief and Dr. Busby cheerily announced, “Well, that was something. If the Russian judges don’t give us at least a 5 for that I, for one, will be deeply disappointed!”

_God, she was adorable._

Though Dr. Mount heard the sounds the words made as Dr. Busby spoke them, she was suddenly having a hard time focusing on their content because she had started to become more acutely aware of the incredible intimacy of their position. Her left arm was still straight out in front and pressed against the forward wall of the elevator, holding them both in place, but her right forearm was not only wrapped tightly around her junior colleague’s stomach, it was also bearing the full weight of both of Dr. Busby’s breasts. And her right cheek, she suddenly realized, was pressed against Dr. Busby’s left. 

Dr. Mount blushed and took a long, deep breath. 

Sensing a newly charged tension in her senior colleague, Delia herself suddenly became acutely aware that not only was she being held close, the entirety of Dr. Mount’s torso was pressed against her back, and her senior colleague’s warm cheek was sealed firmly to her own. There was hardly any part of them from the waist up that was not pressed against the other in some way. She could smell the sweet peppermint of the taller woman’s breath. 

_Oh, my god, Delia thought. She was afraid to move, afraid even the slightest movement might break whatever magical spell had contrived for this to happen. And then, as if it were an automatic reflex over which she had no control, she found herself turning slightly towards Patsy’s breath._

__

_Patsy began to panic. Oh god. This was. Delia feels. Oh god. This…can’t happen. Not here. Not now. I have to… Patsy closed her eyes and drew another long breath._

__

_Right, okay. Here we go. Snap out of it, Mount, she commanded herself._

_Trying not to draw any more attention to the fact that an impressive, quick-thinking save on her part had been transformed into an intoxicating embrace, Patsy slowly released the tension in her arm and, with it, her hold on Delia. She quickly released the “emergency stop” button she had accidentally activated moments earlier._

_But Delia wasn’t done with Patsy. She grabbed her wrist to stop her retreat and pulled her arm back around her, hugged it firmly to her chest and then laced her fingers through Patsy’s, and guided her hand lower, until Patsy’s long fingers were just inside the waist of Delia’s pants._

\------------------------

By the time Drs. Mount and Busby got there, most of the rest of the faculty were already assembled in the meeting hall for the department meeting. Dr. Busby entered the room first and set her things down at the end of the second row of chairs nearest to the door. She took her seat and began to look for her phone in her bag.

Just a few moments after Dr. Busby entered the room, an apparently fully composed and focused Dr. Mount walked through the door and placed her bag on the table next to the podium in the front of the room. The room became noticeably quieter. Delia stopped breathing.

“Right, let’s get started.” Dr. Mount pulled a legal pad out of her bag. “First order of business, approval of the minutes from last meeting. Can I get a motion?”

_Delia’s eyes avoided her senior colleague at first as if seeing her now, in this space, was the forbidden act. When she did finally look up, however, and found Patsy standing there, commanding the room as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened between them, she couldn’t look away._

_Delia’s heart was still racing, only now—less than two minutes removed from the unexpected, glorious encounter—as she watched her senior colleague conduct herself with such familiar measure and poise, she was starting to question what had just happened._

_Had she really just slipped her hand up the back of this woman’s shirt? Had she actually, just minutes before, felt Dr. Mount holding her, felt her tension, felt her poised on the brink of losing herself? Had she felt that woman’s cheek, those lips pressed against her face? Had that hand been pressed against her, had it actually been inside her pants?_

_Delia brought her own hand to her left cheek and looked down at her lap as if there might be some physical trace of the encounter that could answer these questions for her. Without directing them to, her eyes closed._

_Yes. Dr. Mount’s hand had caressed the delicate skin at the top of her leg. That thumb on that gorgeous woman’s hand, those fingers—now being used to add emphasis to her senior colleague’s words—had touched her skin. And yes, Delia had kissed that long, beautiful neck as they held each other close. Those hips had pressed tightly and longingly against these._

_Startled by the intensity of her physiological response to this recollection, Delia feared she may have just moaned softly out loud. She flushed red, looked right and left quickly, and then closed her eyes again and shook her head. No matter what had just happened, she could not let herself forget that she was now in a nearly quiet, packed room of her colleagues._

_Delia opened her eyes and looked back to the front of the room. Dr. Mount was watching her while speaking about the college’s budget deficit and the impact it was likely to have on the department in her bright, husky, RP-tinged voice. Their eyes met, and Dr. Mount smiled warmly at Delia, as if she had noticed her detachment from the room but had found their eye contact reassuring that Delia was okay. This was not a dream. This was all happening._

_God, she’s amazing, Delia thought. How could she make even the college’s budget deficit sound sexy? How could she, at the same time, be watching me to make sure I was okay, and then smile warmly at me as though no one else were present? Perhaps there really was nothing this woman couldn’t do._

\---------------------------

When Dr. Mount finally made it back to her office after the meeting, she locked the door and collapsed into the chair behind her desk. She was slouched down in the chair so deeply that her neck bent awkwardly against its back and her arms stuck out haphazardly over the sides. She moaned as if she had a toothache.

_What the fuck. Fuck…. Shit…. Fuck._

_She cannot, absolutely cannot, be putting her hands down the pants of a junior colleague in an elevator on the way to a faculty meeting. This was not okay._

_Delia had clearly signaled interest, but still. Though they were only 4 years apart in age, Patsy was several years ahead of her professionally, and as chair of the department, Patsy was in a position of power over Delia. She was just starting her career, and she deserved to do so without scandal or controversy facilitated by the weakness of a senior colleague. Especially given that, because of the context for the former chair’s resignation, she hardly thought any of her other colleagues would be keen to dismiss such an entanglement as simply romantic, true love’s inconvenient timing._

_She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and held them there. If she could just…shut out the light of the day, maybe it would all go away. Her lust. Her deep longing to hold Delia again. RIGHT NOW. The longing to just be near to her that she had been working so hard to repress for months. If she could just…_

_Fuck. FUCK. How could she be so careless…_

\------------------------

Dr. Busby had been so persistent after that first official meeting in her office on the first day of the term. She had left Dr. Mount’s office as Dr. Mount had indicated she wanted her to, but then she had returned almost immediately to ask for clarification about what had just happened. 

“Was it something I said?” Dr. Busby had pressed her. “Because you should know that I am really excited about my new position and about the opportunity to contribute to the department. I hope I haven’t said or done anything to make you think otherwise. If it was my poorly delivered humor…”

 _God help her, that adorable, strong, tenacious little woman. That wasn’t it, Patsy had thought to herself. That wasn’t it at all. Did Delia…_ Dr. Busby…really not remember their first meeting months before? Had she genuinely forgotten? 

Dr. Mount supposed that would explain a lot and suddenly felt a wave of relief wash over her. 

When Dr. Busby had arrived in her office for their meeting on the first day of term, Dr. Mount had been shocked to find that the new hire, Dr. Busby, had been the “Delia” she had met that fateful night at last year’s Modern Language Association’s Conference. And when her new junior colleague had acted as though they had never met and then chided her that there must be something she couldn’t do, Dr. Mount had been hurt—again—and then angry and had simply needed to find a way to end the exchange before she said something she would most certainly regret. She had responded as swiftly and professionally as she could under the circumstances. 

But now, it appeared that she had been wrong about Dr. Busby’s intent. And it was dawning on her that she was going to have to find a way to reassure her well-intentioned, good-natured junior colleague that she hadn’t done anything wrong. And she was going to have to find a way to do this without creating an even more awkward situation than she already had, without embarrassing them both with the details of that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 2: Far East Movement’s “Like a G6”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s6H4ku6ZY)


	3. “I’ve Touched This Place Before…”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drs. Mount and Busby make plans to go to lunch.

It was clear that Dr. Mount was going to have to explain why she had ended their meeting so abruptly just moments before, but she couldn’t bring herself to divulge the truth.

“I’m sorry, really. It wasn’t anything you said. I’ve just been a bit on edge today because...I am waiting for an important call. But…I shouldn’t have been so abrupt. I’m sorry.”

“No, please. Don’t apologize. I’m sorry to press you. Sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me, and I was so looking forward to meeting you today. To be honest, I was really hoping to…I’m very familiar with your work—a big fan, actually. I cite your last book heavily in my dissertation.”

 _Patsy’s heart sank watching Delia ramble--she was completely oblivious. How could she have been so brash with her new junior colleague who was clearly just trying to make a good impression with her new chair? She hated watching Delia trying nervously to justify her enthusiasm._

“How about this?” Dr. Mount offered. “Let’s do lunch sometime and you can tell me all about your ideas. I've heard so many good things about you and your work and really am interested in hearing more. What’s next week like for you?”

“Next week would be great. I teach Monday, Wednesday, Friday until 2, but I can do earlier on Tuesday or Thursday.”

“Great. Shall we try for Thursday then? 1pm? We can meet out front and walk to the coffee shop on the corner. They have decent sandwiches.”

“Perfect!” Dr. Busby exclaimed with a smile and trotted out.

 

\------------------------

 

That night Dr. Mount couldn’t sleep. She was anxious for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on and so had stayed up much later than usual, chain smoking. Smoking was not a habit she was proud of, but it was the one thing that seemed to calm her, one of her first impulses when she was nervous. And she was really nervous. 

_Why, though? The term had just begun. There were no fires to put out yet—no unhappy students. No faculty complaining about insufficient funding for travel to conferences. The day had actually gone fairly smoothly._

_Could it be that exchange with Delia earlier? It had completely taken her by surprise to see who she was when she came through the door, and then she had behaved badly and unfairly towards her. And she hadn’t told Delia the real reason for it. She could always do that later if it seemed appropriate, she considered. For now, Patsy felt it was best to let the details of their first meeting lie. No sense making her junior colleague feel even more uncomfortable than she already had around her._

When Dr. Mount finally did fall asleep, it was not a restful sleep. She dreamt, as she sometimes did, that she lived in another time and place. She loved it there as a general rule, loved dreaming of it, but it wasn’t always comfortable. And when she woke, it always frustrated her that she could never recall all the details—just little snippets and the overwhelming feeling that she had been to a place very dear to her. Like she had been home. 

This time, she recalled that it had been cold in her dream…winter, she remembered her cheeks feeling kind of numb from it. And as usual, she recalled that she was herself in the dream—only she was not really herself…an esteemed professor and chair of the department of English at a prestigious university in the States. She was something else…something important, someone people depended on. 

The only other thing she could recall from last night's was the thing that happened just before she woke with a start. She had been hugging someone, had run to her, in the cold, and hugged her as tightly as she could. It felt great—the woman’s nearness, her warm cheek, just…her. And she wished immediately when she woke that she could go back. 

 

\------------------------

 

Delia woke up early on the Thursday she and Dr. Mount had made plans to have lunch. She went for a long run by the river and then stopped by the bakery in her neighborhood for a pear scone and coffee. When she got home, she checked Facebook, Twitter, her email—no major crises, no new tags or likes, nothing pressing. She showered, dressed, and headed out to the office so she could print a couple syllabi she had drafted to get Dr. Mount’s feedback--graduate courses she planned to propose for Spring term. 

After printing her syllabi, she did some class prep—reading in Sarah Waters’ _The Paying Guests_. And by the time 1pm came around, Delia had been up for 8 hours and was famished. She grabbed her papers, her phone, and her bag, and ran down stairs to meet Dr. Mount.

About half way down, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. And then immediately, she felt it buzz again. And again as she pulled it out. Three text messages. She unlocked her phone. All three texts were from… Delia squinted to make sure she was reading it right, “Lady Who Helped You at MLA” ?? 

_What? She stopped walking. Why would **she** be texting me now with such urgency? That was several months ago! _

And then she looked at the messages…

> “Hey, it’s Patsy. Got your cell number from Monica, the office manager. Hope you don’t mind.”  
> “Need to take care of something quickly before lunch. Sorry.”  
> “Meet you out front in about 10?”

**...**

_Ohhhh, shit. Delia thought to herself. Oh, no. NO WAY. Shit. Pasty…Dr. Mount…was... **is** “Lady Who Helped You at MLA”?!?! _

_Oh, no…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 3: Thievery Corporation’s “Lebanese Blond”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq0ESlJhvBM)


	4. Uncanny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delia and Patsy meet up and clear the air about thier first encounter.

This was not the plot twist Delia had hoped for. 

She had been so relieved when Dr. Mount had proposed lunch. She had hoped that perhaps this might not only be a chance for her to get to know her colleague better, to share ideas about new courses and get feedback, but that it might also be the beginning of a friendship. Delia knew that Dr. Mount had mainly suggested it as a way of apologizing for being a bit short with her and she realized that they were not exactly peers professionally (Dr. Mount being so accomplished and well-known and Delia being…well, not quite there yet), but she also knew that they had some important things in common: They had similar research interests and critical points of view, both had spent time living in the U.K., and both were lesbians and academics, which meant they shared a sort of automatic double kinship in the world. None of this was a guarantee of anything, of course, but it was something.

But now, Delia had no idea what to expect. She had so many questions.

She was mortified that her new chair, the esteemed and enviable Dr. Patience Mount, had been the one to find her drunk in the hallway of her hotel at last year’s Modern Language Association Conference. Had that had anything to do with her trying to end their meeting abruptly? Delia couldn’t quite sort out why that would have caused Dr. Mount to become irritated or angry with her several months later. She had been the helper, the one presumably sober (or at least more so) of the two of them that night, so if Dr. Mount hadn’t realized that Delia was the drunk woman she had helped before, surely she would have as soon as Delia entered her office for their meeting. But if Dr. Mount did remember before or recognize her after she walked in, why hadn’t she just said so? 

Delia racked her brain trying to think of something that might explain Dr. Mount’s response to her. The MLA encounter had been brief. When Dr. Mount happened upon her in the hallway, Delia was starting to dose off. It had been such a long day, such a long series of days—so many interviews—and Delia was physically exhausted. She hadn’t been able to get her keycard to work to open her hotel room door and so had decided to rest her tired, inebriated eyes before trying again (“Just for a minute,” she had told herself). To the best of Delia’s recollection, all that had happened after Dr. Mount was able (immediately) to get her keycard to work was that she had helped drunk Delia get up and into her room, had kindly guided her to one of the beds, had made sure she was okay, and then had entered her cell number into Delia’s phone in case she needed anything. That was it.

Delia didn’t recall having done or said anything particularly objectionable. She had simply (if embarrassingly) drank too much too fast for her tiny, compact frame—making the rookie mistake of being a bit too eager to take advantage of Happy Hour drinks pricing without taking similar advantage of the free appetizers. She had been sleepy drunk, not black-out drunk. And she genuinely couldn’t imagine what she might have done or said that would have upset Dr. Mount. It wouldn’t have been like her at all to be rude or mean-spirited. Unless…

Had she hit on her? Oh, god. Delia couldn’t even let herself imagine that. Though Dr. Mount was most certainly one of the most compelling and attractive women she had had the pleasure of encountering, Delia hadn’t gotten a good look at her that night. Surely, if she had opened her eyes enough to see the woman guiding her to her bed, she would have noticed it was Dr. Mount immediately. She would not have forgotten that.

Delia shook her head to erase the thought that she might have acted even remotely crudely towards Dr. Mount. No, it just wasn’t possible. Delia might speak her mind a bit too freely for some, but it was hardly her style to get drunk and force herself on unsuspecting women. It had to be something else…but what?

…

When Dr. Mount finally finished tending to the senior faculty member who was upset that he had been denied a room change for one of his classes, she refreshed her lipstick and checked to make sure everything else was in order. She smoothed the front of her blouse and skirt, grabbed her bag, and slipped out the door before anyone else could show up with some pressing issue that would further delay her lunch date…meeting. She was excited to have the opportunity to make a better, second impression with Delia—even if it was actually the third time they would meet. Yes, a fresh start would likely make both of them feel a lot better.

When Dr. Mount emerged from the building, she found Delia sitting in the sun on one of the large stone balustrades that framed the wide steps in front of the building. Delia was wearing over-sized, black 60s-style sunglasses and had her head tilted back as if she were trying to get some color on her face. Her knees were bent up, her arms hugging them tightly to her chest. Dr. Mount paused and noted that Delia looked rather glamorous in that posture and that it made the well-defined muscles of Delia’s shoulders and upper arms more pronounced.

As she made her way towards her junior colleague, Dr. Mount’s pumps tapped lightly on the stone steps. Delia must have been deep in thought because she didn’t seem to hear her senior colleague’s approach or notice her then standing there just a few feet away. 

“Delia.” Dr. Mount reached forward and placed her hand on Delia’s tense shoulder. 

Delia jumped back, startling Dr. Mount. And then she noticed who it was who had just touched her shoulder and her cheeks flushed red. 

“Oh! Hi!” Delia stammered, “Sorry—I was just…you startled me. Shall we?” Patsy looked so beautiful, Delia thought, happy and radiant.

“We shall!” Dr. Mount chirped back playfully. She was so used to other academics being always on, always serious, always trying to impress. But Delia’s manner was different, so refreshingly real. She wasn’t exactly laid back—that didn’t seem to be Delia’s thing—but there was a genuineness, a sweetness, and an ever-present enthusiasm about Delia that Dr. Mount found deeply endearing. 

“So, you’re settling in okay?” Dr. Mount asked as they started their walk to Trixie’s, the coffee shop on the corner.

“Oh, yes. Yes.” Delia sniffled and then rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her first knuckle as if something had tickled it. “Everyone’s been really kind, and the place I’m renting is small and charming, close to campus and a great park—perfect for Pearl and I.”

“Oh,” Dr. Mount’s heart skipped a beat. “Pearl…of course, your partner?”

“Oh, no,” Delia chuckled, “Pearl is, well, I sometimes think she’s far better than a partner. Pearl is my canine companion, a yellow lab—well, mutt—but she’s mostly lab-shaped and definitely has the good-natured enthusiasm of one. She’s great company.”

Dr. Mount smiled. “And your classes? How are they going? The students here can be a bit challenging, I’ve found. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but they can get pretty intense.”

“Oh, no, I love that. I’m, well, I can be a bit intense at times—especially when I’m talking about something I feel passionately about. But I guess that’s true of everyone.”

Delia was so grateful that Dr. Mount had taken the lead on keeping their conversation going. After her senior colleague’s texts had come through and the embarrassing reality of their first encounter had descended upon her like a bucket of ice water, Delia had exited the building as quickly as she could and found herself struggling not to burst into tears. 

Crying was not her usual response to hard things—she was usually quite stoic, actually, tough and resilient—but Delia was emotionally exhausted. Just a month earlier, she had moved out of the home she had shared with her now ex-girlfriend for the better part of five years. The break-up had been a long time coming, but it had been tough nonetheless. Once they finally made the decision that Amy would not be moving with Delia when she left to start her new position, they had had to sort through all of their accumulated joint property and decide who would keep what—ordinary things, but things they had jointly purchased as they built a life together: this bowl, that book, towels, a vase, pictures, etc. Then Delia had packed up all that was hers; and she and Pearl, who they had adopted together, had made the ten-hour drive in one shot to Delia’s new life. Though there had been some sadness in her leaving, she had found the strength to get through it in her excitement for her new job and the promise of a fresh start. Finding out that her fresh start might have been undermined by a reckless but mostly (she hoped) innocent night nine months prior was just one thing too many for her. Though Delia tended towards optimism and enthusiasm, even she had her limits and got weary and teary from time to time. This was one of those times—she felt deflated and a little heart-broken. 

“Ah, here we are,” Dr. Mount stopped in front of the coffee shop. She leaned across Delia and opened the door, held it for her, and said, “After you” with a smile. As she did this, Delia caught a glimpse of a familiar scent...light, sweet, eucalyptus. She felt a shiver pulse through her. 

“Thank you,” Delia smiled, thinking not only of the simple courtesy of her holding the door but also the deeper generosity in her disposition, which Delia felt more intensely now that she knew what Patsy had known for at least the last ten days.

It was a humid and especially warm late-summer day, and as Delia entered Trixie's, she found the mellowness of the lower-light, air-conditioned shop to be a welcome relief, better suited to her mood. As they waited in line to order their sandwiches at the front counter, one of Dr. Mount’s graduate students approached to explain why she hadn’t yet sent her the dissertation chapter she had promised before the start of the term. 

“I’m nearly done, just having a hard time wrapping up,” the student explained. 

“It can be hard to know where to end chapters of a larger project in the early stages,” Dr. Mount sympathized, “But don’t forget, this is just a draft. The whole point of your sharing it with me is to get feedback. They’ll be plenty of revision, I’m sure—there always is. And I can read the chapter with an eye towards helping you identify a good place to end this one if that would be helpful.”

“Yes, that would be terrific. Thank you. I think I might also just be a bit nervous about sharing the draft. There’s so much to cover, and I don’t want to disappoint.”

“Ah, the joys of dissertating,” Delia interjected. “I think I still have PTSD from writing mine. Dr. Mount is absolutely spot on, though. Remember that this is just a draft and you will get feedback and will no doubt have plenty of ideas about revision yourself as you write the remaining chapters. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to get it perfect from the start.”

“Have you met our newest hire, Dr. Busby?” Dr. Mount gestured towards her junior colleague.

“Oh, yes,” the student responded enthusiastically. And then, to Dr. Busby, “I was at your job talk when you came for the campus interview. Loved it. And those images of the recently discovered Plath text. AMAZING. I can’t wait to read the book. When does it come out?”

“Oh,” Delia blushed slightly. “That’s so kind of you to say. Isn’t that text fascinating? I’m supposed to have the final manuscript to the publisher by the end of October, but you know…lot’s of revision to take care of before then,” she winked, “So…we’ll see!”

“Exciting! Okay, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Thanks for talking me down a bit—I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not performing brain surgery here... Anyway, thank you both. Have a nice lunch!”

Delia and Patsy placed their orders and found an open table near the back. As they eased into their seats, it seemed to Patsy that in the short walk to the back of the restaurant something in Delia had changed. The relative warmth and ease of their brief conversation on the walk to Trixie’s and then with the graduate student seemed to have dissipated. 

Delia began fidgeting. She pulled her phone out of her bag and put it back, moved her Diet Coke off to the side, slid the straw in and out several times, arranged her silverware so it lined up neatly, shifted the napkin on her lap. It was almost as if, Dr. Mount considered, Delia was avoiding eye contact with her.

“So...” Dr. Mount began, unsure of what she was going to say next but feeling as though she ought to fill the silence with something. Before she could continue, Delia looked up. Patsy noticed that her eyes were a bit glassy. It almost looked as though she were about to cry. Patsy was silent as she searched Delia’s eyes for some indication of what was going on and then her expression began to change as her concern developed.

“Are you..? Is everything…okay?” her brow furrowed as she spoke, and then she reflexively reached towards Delia’s left hand, which was now resting on the table in front of her. Before she reached Delia, it occurred to Patsy that perhaps it would be too familiar a gesture and she placed her hand palm down on the table between them.

Delia held eye the contact with Patsy. It seemed almost as if Delia were imploring her to answer a question without it first being asked. Patsy was so confused. She wanted to help, but she hadn’t a clue where to begin. She looked for the answer in Delia’s eyes but found none. And then Delia spoke.

“I…’m fine. I….” She shook her head. “Oh, geez, who am I kidding? Pretending has never been my strong suit.” Delia reached in her bag, pulled out her phone, and fumbled with it for a minute. And then she just stared at the screen. 

Patsy waited—her eyes widened. She was concerned and getting impatient.

“It’s…” Delia continued. And then paused again. She shook her head. “It’s this,” she said as she held up the screen for Patsy to see.

“Oh,” Patsy said, stunned. “Ohhh. I see. Yes. Oh, I...I hadn’t thought about that, how my cell number might show up when I texted you. I’m sorry, Delia, I should have said something. I thought about it, and I might have, but...I really didn’t want to make things more awkward than I already had. I’m really sorry.”

“Wait, YOU’RE sorry?” Delia blurted out. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I mean, thank you for helping me that night. But…what a truly horrifying way for me to introduce myself to a future colleague...to my future department chair. And to YOU, no less!” 

Patsy felt her lungs deflate a bit when she heard those last four words and then her shoulders softened. She gave Delia a warm, sympathetic half smile.

“You have literally nothing to be embarrassed about, Delia. It was just a happenstance encounter. You had a little too much to drink. We’ve all been there. I helped you to your room, that’s all.”

“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it. It’s just, I was worried perhaps I had made a fool of myself.” She laughed, realizing how ridiculous that sounded given the context, “I mean, besides being piss drunk and nearly passed out just outside the door to my hotel room unable to get the damn keycard to work.” Delia shook her head, dropped her phone to the table facedown, and put her palm to her forehead.

Patsy leaned forward and covered Delia’s hand with hers, squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You’re fine. I promise," she said softly. "We can just go forward as if it never happened.”

Delia looked at their hands and then at Patsy. Her bright blue eyes narrowed gratefully, and she folded her thumb over Patsy’s as if to say thank you and acknowledge her senior colleague’s continued kindness.

...

Patsy was relieved to get the fact of their first encounter mostly out in the open and was happy to put at least that behind her, but there had been more to her experience of that fateful night at the MLA conference months earlier. And she wasn’t about to confess that now since she didn’t even understand it all herself: The deeply unsettling déjà vu sensation that something about Delia—that night and both times that she had been in her presence since—had called forth in her, the recurring dream she had had for the first time that night after leaving Delia in her hotel room, their brief encounter the next morning that had left Patsy feeling defensive and irrationally angry. 

It was a complex tangle of emotions that made Patsy feel as though time were collapsing. The echoes of intense feelings that came with these déjà vu moments were both familiar and yet somehow totally new to her. They were uncanny, really, and they were with her now as she removed her hand from Delia’s. 

She wondered if Delia felt it, too, but at least for the time being, she decided to keep it to herself and enjoy the silent comfort of the present moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 4: Sylvan Esso’s “Coffee”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr5AIKRPIHo)


	5. The MLA: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened that night at the MLA…Part 1.

Dr. Mount’s MLA keynote address had been a huge success. Her lecture was basically a version of one of the chapters of her not-yet-completed book project, _Woke_ , which explores the fantasy lives of LGBTQ characters in film and contemporary literature. Starting the talk with a typical Mount-style invocation, she had captivated the room almost immediately. 

After thanking the conference committee for inviting her to speak, complimenting the many thought-provoking talks she had attended so far at the conference, and noting that she had found some of the graduate student papers especially interesting and was excited about the new work being done in the field, she paused briefly to get her notes in order, took a deep breath, smiled warmly at the audience, and then asked them a simple rhetorical question: 

“Who among us,” she scanned the room, “doesn’t fantasize from time to time about the life we want, the life we wish we had, or the person?” 

She let the words hang in the air--inviting the nearly one thousand in attendance to call to mind their most private thoughts and desires. And she didn't start speaking again until she could see it on their faces: The transformation that recollecting their fantasies prompted, the way that recalling them often registered as empowering or humbling, sometimes both. 

It was her special superhero power, an ex had once told her angrily, “You fucking sit there silently, so pleased with yourself, like you’re waiting for me to have the conversation myself. And you know I will because you know I can’t fucking stand the silence. I fucking hate it.”

But audiences at these invited lectures loved it. They loved how she would say or ask something that provoked them and then wait patiently for their imaginations to fully engage before moving on. It was her way of connecting with them.

Most speakers talked a room into submission. Dr. Mount did just the opposite. She stood in front of them, undaunted, and bravely waited for them to find their place, their investment in her subject. It was an unusual talent that required a good bit of flexibility and sensitivity on her part, one that tended to make people feel vulnerable and raw and, perhaps not surprisingly, frequently resulted in entire rooms falling in love with her. They loved being held by her in this way. It felt both safe and somehow dangerous. And because she had a reputation for delivering amazing talks, audiences tended to trust that once they joined her in whatever thought experiment she had planned for them, she would make it worth their while.

Delia was sitting in the back of the auditorium on the floor against the wall so that she could charge her laptop during the talk. When Dr. Mount took the stage, Delia had been checking her email, laptop perched on her knees, hoping that perhaps one of the schools she had interviewed with had already emailed her to schedule a campus visit. It was rare, but it happened.

She was distracted by this and so tired from the 18 interviews she had managed in the past three days that she wasn’t sure she would make it through the entire keynote. But she had heard that Dr. Mount’s talks were worth it and so had made the effort. 

When Dr. Mount started speaking, Delia almost immediately abandoned her screen, and the silence in the room found her not drifting away in thought but sitting bolt upright in the back of the room on the floor, nibbling on the corner of her thumbnail, eyes wide and fixed on Dr. Mount in the front of the room. She was fascinated by the scene as it unfolded. She watched Dr. Mount watching them, and then she watched as those around her similarly gave up their notebooks, tablets, phones, and laptops. They were all transfixed and, with charged anticipation, were waiting to see where she would take them next.

…

Happy hour in the main conference hotel at MLA after Dr. Mount's keynote address was, as usual, loud and chaotic. It was not a scene for introverts and left most who wandered past on the way back from a session or an interview feeling like an outcast and either wishing they were somewhere else--anywhere quieter or more welcoming--or wishing they could be one the lucky ones with a seat in one of the lounge areas. 

The volume in the bar became more intense with every minute as people traded credit cards for booze and stories for laughter. Dr. Mount was sitting on a large, deep magenta, crescent-shaped couch in the back corner surrounded by a small group of well-known scholars who were all happily chatting each other up. 

Dr. Mount’s posture in this scene made at least one other thing clear: If she had a second superhero power in addition to commanding a room full of people, it was sitting gracefully in short skirts and dresses. She sat now, thusly, in her short black shift and grey cardigan at one end of the couch--one impossibly long, bare leg tucked down and back towards the couch on her left; the other folded comfortably over the first, pointing in the opposite direction...towards the attractive woman sitting in the lounge chair to her right. 

The woman, about 10 years older than Dr. Mount, was the department chair at another prestigious institution and a member of the conference steering committee. They seemed familiar, and the woman kept throwing her head back dramatically as she laughed at Dr. Mount's dry telling of her recent reading and book signing at her father’s nursing home. “About ten minutes into my reading,” Dr. Mount explained, “a woman in the second row elbowed her husband, who had already started dozing off, and said...much too loudly, ‘BOB, MARCY SAYS SHE’S A LESBIAN!’”

Delia heard the woman’s laugh in response to this as she snaked her way through the lounge area looking for her girlfriend, Amy, and some of her other grad school friends. She turned her head toward the laughter and very briefly made eye contact with Dr. Mount over the woman's shoulder. This took Delia by surprise and made her feel uncharacteristically shy, so instead of smiling (which would have been her standard response), she looked away quickly. Fortunately, as she did so, she spotted Amy, who waived her over and patted the empty spot next to her on one of the wide lounge chairs on the other side of the bar.

…

A couple of drinks later, a woman dressed mostly in black in fashionable high-waisted trousers and red four-inch heels came up behind Dr. Mount, covered her eyes with her right hand, and slipped her left arm across Dr. Mount’s shoulder and chest, playfully pinning her to the back of the couch. Dr. Mount reflexively placed her hand over the woman’s on her chest as the woman whispered in her ear, “Sexy. You know I hate it when you make other women laugh like that.” 

At this, Patsy removed the woman’s perfumed hand from her eyes, peeled the other off of her chest, and leaned away as she looked back towards her. It was Noelle, a narrow, edgy-looking academic who taught play-writing at the American University of Paris and with whom Patsy had been opportunistically involved off and on for a few years. She had shoulder length, platinum blond hair and might be mistaken for the musician St. Vincent on a good night. But this was not a good night. 

Patsy’s face betrayed her annoyance and she clipped sternly but inconspicuously, so that only Noelle could hear, “Please, Noelle, you know I don’t like it when you do that. Besides, I thought we agreed we were taking some time...you know, to reevaluate?” She raised her eyebrows.

Noelle frowned clownishly. “No, you agreed. I know what I want. Je veux te baiser.” And then she smiled in an equally exaggerated way and fluttered her eyelids as if she thought Dr. Mount would find it attractive or entertaining. She did not.

“You’re drunk.” Dr. Mount observed instead.

“Yeah, so? You used to love me when I was drunk.”

“No, I used to love hooking up with you when **I** was drunk--that’s a very different thing.” Dr. Mount was clearly frustrated. “And I was in the middle of a conversation that I was rather enjoying. I wish you would learn to pick your moments more carefully.”

“Fine,” Noelle grumbled. “Grumpy. But someday you’re going to wish I was hanging all over you and by then, I might have given it up. Might,” she chuckled as she said this raising one hand in the air with her finger pointed towards the ceiling for dramatic effect. “Not likely, but you never know!” She winked. And then she fell to the ground, disappearing behind the back of the couch.

Patsy rolled her eyes and sighed deeply, said her apologies to the rest of the group, and, to their unanimously fervent protestations, explained that that was going to have to be it for her for the night. She gathered her things and made her way unhurriedly around behind the couch to help Noelle (who had started unsuccessfully trying to raise herself) up off the floor, supporting her as they walked over to the elevators.

Delia saw them walk past, arm in arm, and thought she was catching a rare glimpse of Dr. Mount sneaking off for an illicit encounter. She elbowed Amy and said as much and then excused herself to go to the bathroom.

...

Once Dr. Mount had seen Noelle back to her room and staved off her sloppy advances, she returned to her own room, ordered room service, changed out of her dress and heels and into her old, worn out Oxford University jersey and tattered sweatpants, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Finally, peace and quiet. She decided to have another drink while waiting for her dinner to arrive and headed out, barefoot, to get some ice from the ice maker just down the hall.

It was on her way to get this ice that Dr. Mount found Delia sitting up, head turned to the side, asleep in the hallway.

Dr. Mount clicked her tongue disapprovingly but then thought to herself that, though she’d had enough of helping drunks for the night, she couldn't very well just walk past the poor woman without stopping to make sure she was okay. She crouched down and placed her fingers on Delia’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmmmm,” Delia managed, affirmatively, though not terribly convincingly.

“Well, we can’t very well have you sleeping here. Do you have a room?”

“Hmmmm,” Delia managed again. And then she jerked her arm up between them and presented Patsy with the keycard for her hotel room.

“I see. Well, shall we try it then?” Patsy took the card from Delia, stood up, and inserted it into the door closest to them. Green light...they were good to go.

“Alright,” Patsy announced, “We’re in… What is your name?”

“Hmmm? Deel-lia.”

“Right, well, Delia, you are good to go. Let’s get you inside so you can properly sleep this off.” She helped a very dozey Delia to her feet and guided her through the door, one arm wrapped lightly around her back, the other supporting her elbow. 

Before leaving her, Patsy made sure Delia was secure on one of the beds (not too close to the edge), entered her phone number into Delia’s cell, and told her to call if she needed anything. 

“Are you sure you’re okay now? Don’t need anything else?” Patsy asked before leaving.

“Hmmm,” Delia weakly assured her. And then, as Patsy started to rise off the edge of the bed to go, Delia grabbed her wrist. “Pats?” she slurred.

Patsy’s head turned sharply towards the still close-eyed Delia. She looked at the younger woman’s tight grip around her wrist, and felt a bit confused. No one called her “Pats” but her mum, and she had been dead for years. Perhaps most disconcerting was that, though Patsy was used to people recognizing her at the MLA, she hadn’t told Delia her name, and as far as she could tell, Delia hadn't so much as opened a single eye the entire time she'd been with her. Had she recognized her voice?

“Pats!” Delia called out again--much louder this time, insistent and impatient.

“Settle down,” Patsy teased. “Drunk. I’m right here. You’re holding my wrist. What is it?”

“I’m so drunk,” she mumbled.

“I can see that.”

“No, I mean...” she spoke more clearly this time, “I’m so embarrassed. Seriously. I'm so drunk. I don’t usually get like this. Please don’t tell anyone.” 

“Of course,” Patsy replied with a sympathetic half smile that Delia couldn’t see. “I won’t tell a soul. So long as you promise not to tell anyone that I wander the halls in my ratty old sweats helping tired drunks to their rooms.”

Delia chuckled and then raised her eyebrows like she was trying to summon every bit of energy she had to open her eyes. But she was not successful. She released Patsy’s wrist and patted the back of her hand, “Okay, deal. But I’m sure you look swell. You sound like a very nice lady.”

“Right. Well, thanks. And here, take this,” Patsy reached behind her and pulled the duvet to cover Delia as she stood, “We can’t have you catching cold.” Patsy said as she tucked her in. 

Delia seemed comfortable as she snuggled under the covers, and Patsy decided it was okay to go. As she made her way towards the door, Delia called out again, “Pats?”

“Hmmm,” Patsy managed as she reached for the door handle. Delia’s sleepy, insistent familiarity tugged gently at her heart. She looked back towards the bed. 

“You really are a sort of angel,” Delia mused. 

Patsy smiled reluctantly, thinking that she hadn’t done much but also feeling touched by Delia’s earnest appreciation for what she had done. She paused at the door. And then Delia spoke again. 

“And the tragedy is, no one will ever know that either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 5: The Fleetwoods’ “Come Softly to Me”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSyfphBVbmo)  
> 
> 
> If you don't normally listen to the Outros, I would suggest listening to this one. This one and the last two especially have reinforced something in the chapters, hinted at something, and/or supplemented what is narrated in some way. This one is kind of an emotional epilogue for the chapter and a corollary to the explicit narrative...
> 
> If that makes no sense to you, just reread the final scene of the chapter, think of canon Pats and Deels, and enjoy the song. :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. The MLA: Part 2

Patsy looked down at the carpet beneath her feet. She was frozen where she stood, inside Delia’s MLA hotel room with her hand on the doorknob. Something in Delia’s words had struck a chord deep within her, and she felt an inexplicable sadness, a raw and excruciating feeling of loss that seemed totally out of proportion to the moment. 

Something wasn’t right. Or, rather, it was. It was oddly right, but...she couldn’t sort it out. She didn't want to leave and was starting to feel a little panicky. Her heart was racing like something horrible was about to happen over which she had no control. 

You’re ridiculous, she chided herself. You’ve just helped a complete stranger to her room because she was passed out drunk in the hallway. Snap out of it. 

Patsy pushed through the sense of impending doom that had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach, opened the door, and left Delia without saying another word.

…

When she got back to her room, Patsy poured herself a deep bourbon and lay back on her bed. She felt her hands shaking a bit as she replayed what had just happened in her mind, searching for why it had triggered her the way that it had. 

The woman had called her “Pats,” as if she knew her well. And then the woman’s earnest thank you for being an “angel” and her saying that “no one would ever know that either”… It wasn’t just that those comments had seemed a bit much relative to the degree of kindness Patsy had shown her--it was something else. A feeling of déjà vu that seemed to hit her like a punch to the gut. She had heard those words before.

Patsy shook her head. She must be a good bit more tipsy than she had thought she was. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, had had her lecture to finish prepping last-minute and then to deliver...and then those drinks at happy hour. Noelle and, later, Delia had been so obviously inebriated, perhaps Patsy had missed the extent to which she, too, was feeling the effects. 

She took another swallow of bourbon, closed her eyes, and tried to allow the alcohol to calm her confused spirit. And then...

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. “Room service!”

Patsy jumped from the bed. She had forgotten all about the food she had ordered before she went to get ice. Oh, and the ice! She had forgotten that, too, it seemed. Must have abandoned the bucket in the hallway outside of Delia’s room.

She opened the door and watched with some dread as the delivery woman rolled the dining cart into her room. Patsy winced at the smell of freshly fried fish and chips when the woman lifted the silver lid covering the plate to reveal the meal she had ordered herself. 

After the woman left, Patsy stood staring at the cart, felt her stomach turn a bit, and decided she no longer had an appetite. She rolled the cart back into the hallway with the food untouched. 

All she wanted now was a cigarette to calm her nerves, a few more swigs of bourbon, and a good night’s sleep. Whatever she was feeling now would no doubt be relieved some by the light of day tomorrow. Besides, she ought not make it too late a night, she considered. She had a relatively early flight and would need to be ready for her car to the airport by 7am. 

Patsy hot-boxed her cigarette, drained her bourbon, and shut off the light. In spite of the predictable calming effects of the cigarette and the bourbon, she was still quite tense with emotion. She lay stiffly on her back on top of the covers staring at the dark ceiling, her mind and heart swirling with fragments of visions and emotions--as if she were dreaming and her brain was trying to filter out the nonsense of the day. Only instead of filtering it and sparing her the trouble, the clipped moments and sensations were all being paraded before her like a freak show cast by her own, anxious inner-demon…

_Noelle...the room of people before her as she delivered her talk...the crowd of people in the lounge...the laughter of her colleague...love...Delia, curled drunkenly, happily under her bed covers...sadness...her father appearing to listen intently to her reading at his nursing home as an elderly woman called out that she had heard Patsy was a lesbian...his face not registering any response to the woman’s interruption further confirming his detachment from his surroundings, from her…longing...lemonade...a ghastly, dusty jug on a windowsill...a flash of danger...sadness...alone, she was alone...love...she was lost, she had lost someone…_

__

_Patsy sat next to Delia in the hospital--heartbroken, worried. Her heart swelled with love and longing. She reached out for Delia’s hand, turned it over in hers, examining the dirt deeply embedded in the short nails of the smaller woman’s sweet, soft hands. She felt briefly consoled by the feel of Delia’s skin, the nearness of her. Delia. And then felt the horror of loss, again, as Delia looked in her eyes and asked, “Are you a friend of mine?”_

_Delia. Delia. Delia!_

Patsy’s alarm went off, and she startled from the bed, blinked several times trying to focus on something, anything in the room around her. She was disoriented and couldn’t figure out where, when she was. She felt dizzy, barely able to focus on anything in the dark room, and everything seemed to spin for just a minute before she was able to make it out. She leaned forward and put a hand on the nightstand for support.

She shook her head. Right, okay. The MLA. Hotel room. Alone. It was coming back to her now.

Well done, Mount, she thought to herself. You must have really tied one on last night. She put her hand to her head and then to her stomach. Queasy. 

Her dream. What had she been dreaming? She didn’t recall, just had a deeply troubling sensation in her gut. She was both relieved to be awake, to find herself in this sterile, safe hotel room--alone, on the morning of her departure from MLA--and sad to no longer be asleep, to have left whatever, whoever she had been dreaming about.

Patsy looked at the clock beside the bed, annoyed as if she had just noticed that the alarm was sounding. It was 6:31. She only had a few minutes to shower and gather her things if she was going to have time to grab coffee before her car arrived to take her to the airport. And she desperately needed coffee to clear the fog in her head.

She shut off the alarm and dashed into the bathroom for a quick, hot shower. 

…

Twenty-five minutes later, Dr. Mount emerged casually from the hotel lobby’s automatic revolving door and into the budding light of the early morning. Her hair was up in a loose bun, and she smelled freshly showered and looked gorgeous as ever in her slim, ankle length black pants and crisp white shirt. Her oversized Burberry leather tote was slung over her right shoulder, her matching rolling suitcase trailed neatly just behind her, and a cup of piping hot coffee was nestled firmly in her left hand. 

She paused for a moment and scanned the chaos of the scene before her, looking for her hired car. Hoards of tired, slightly disoriented people were bustling about, frantically trying to locate their airport shuttles and cabs. 

Ahh, the MLA, she thought to herself. There is no part of it free of tension and anxiety. Not sorry to be leaving.

Just then, a compact, dark-haired woman bumped into Dr. Mount’s left elbow, sending a squirt of hot coffee flying out of the small opening in the lid of Dr. Mount’s large paper cup, burning the side of her hand, staining the cuff of her shirt, and almost causing her to drop her bag to prevent losing any more of the precious coffee. 

“I’m so sorry!” the woman called back over her shoulder as she ran past, rushing to catch an airport shuttle that was idling at the curb and struggling to keep her two roller bags and backpack from falling into a heap as she did. One of the roller bags was already turned onto its side and was being dragged unwillingly by the smaller woman’s pure, brute force along the pavement.

Patsy’s brow furrowed. She looked at the hot coffee splattered on her hand and wrist. And then she looked up and caught the eyes of the woman who had caused it to leap from the cup. For a split second, it felt as though time stood still, like some great, cosmic force had just paused them and everyone around them mid-action. 

> Delia! Patsy’s heart lept, jumped, skipped a beat, stumbled inelegantly, tripped and fell, dropped everything...and began crawling towards the woman. Delia! Patsy’s heart was screaming at her, at Delia. But its cries fell tragically flat. Patsy was moved but couldn’t make sense of its calls. Delia! Delia! her heart continued as it pulsed fiercely. Delia!

And then the action resumed. 

Patsy let go of her roller bag and brought her hand to her chest. Delia continued for a moment to look over her shoulder at Patsy and then she turned back to face her shuttle van. Patsy just stood there, watching Delia, right hand on her chest, eyes wide, a look of utter shock on her face. 

“I’m so sorry!” the woman called back a second time over her shoulder but was turned away from Patsy this time as she tried to regain control over her bags. And then another woman joined Delia, relieved her of the more recalcitrant bag, and hurried her along. “We’re so late! Quick, before it pulls away!” 

Patsy looked angrily to the other woman and then to Delia as they went and suddenly recalled where she had seen the shorter, dark-haired woman. It was the woman from the hallway who she had helped into her room last night. And not only had she bumped Patsy carelessly, nearly causing her to lose her coffee and drop all her things, she was acting as though she had never seen Patsy before. And she was letting that other woman hurry her away. But Patsy didn’t want her to go, and she suddenly felt angry, furious. How dare she! 

And then she caught herself. What was the big deal? So the woman had accidentally bumped into her? So she was somewhat weirdly, maybe even rudely acting as though they hadn’t met... So what? She was clearly in a rush. They all were. Besides, it wasn’t like she owed Patsy anything. 

Patsy tried to talk herself out of her sudden flash of anger, and yet she just couldn’t shake the intensity of her emotion. Ridiculous though it seemed to her very rational, sense-making brain, her heart was still clamoring, calling for attention--wailing, even. Patsy felt deeply wounded and raw in ways she simply could not make sense of. It had all happened so fast. And she felt abandoned as she watched Delia affectionately help the other woman--the woman who had hurried her along and who now appeared to be her partner, into the airport shuttle. 

Patsy watched the van pull away with Delia inside. She felt trapped by the complexity of her emotion, held captive by her inability to make sense of its appeals. Anger, frustration, heartbreak swirled together in Patsy’s stomach, and she suddenly felt ill. Her face flushed red, and her eyes swelled with tears. Feeling exposed, she reached in her bag, pulled out her sunglasses, and covered her eyes from view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 6: Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-ezEtJ_-s)


	7. Welsh Sunshine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I really didn't have time to update again so soon, but...well, somehow I wrote another chapter. And it's a long one. I had every intention of making it sexy (felt like we needed a break from the drawn-out angst and complexity of the last few), but...the story kind of took over and drew me in another direction. Don't worry--sexy times are coming, I promise. :) Hope you like this in the meantime.

_Young Delia was underwater--she loved it there, loved to hold her breath and look up from below and marvel at the swirling, filtered brightness above her. Others found it terrifying and her brother thought her crazy for it, but Delia loved the contrast of the deep darkness beneath her and the openness of the sky above the surface of the water. It was quiet there, and she felt oddly safe, held by the persistence and vastness of the ocean around her._

_When she couldn’t stay under any longer, Delia flapped her feet, her face brimming with a bright, cheeky smile as she broke through the surface of the water into the unusually hot, clear, dry Welsh summer day._

…

_She was running up a windy, wooded path on a hillside in the dense fog--dark, rich earth and knotted tree roots all around her. Hurry! She looked for a place to hide...and then placed her palms against the base of a tree and admired its dense, twisted glory. This is perfect, she thought to herself as she shimmied up the trunk and tucked into a bend in a tall branch, away from view. She heard shuffling in the dirt and ivy beneath her._

_“DELIA!” she heard Lili searching softly. “DEEEELIA!”_

_“Shhhhh! You’re going to give us away!” Delia chided from above in a loud whisper. And then she locked her legs around the branch she was on, wrapped her left arm tightly around the narrow trunk, and lowered the other towards her best friend at the base of the tree._

_Lili looked up in delight--they had done this before. She put a hand on a lower branch to anchor herself, pressed off the rough tree trunk with her right foot, and launched herself just high enough that she could grab the top of Delia’s forearm near her elbow. Aided by Delia’s quick, strong pull, she carefully made her way to the hiding spot that Delia had found for them._

_Their slight, sun-kissed 11-year-old forms now faced each other--toes touching, legs folded up between them, chins on knees for compactness...all four of their arms and their damp, brown hands reaching straight out holding onto the others’ shoulders to secure them in place. Their quiet smiles were so broad, their eyes so tight with joy that their faces were starting to hurt._

_Lili couldn’t take it anymore. “He’ll never find us!” she squealed in a loud whisper. Delia released one of Lili’s shoulders and covered her mouth to keep her from giving them away. “Shhhh!” Delia scolded softly, and they both started giggling--making them wobble slightly on their branch._

_They heard a twig snap and held their breaths. Peering down beneath them, they spotted small, 9-year-old Edwin, his fingertips pressed lightly to the trunk of the tree. He was looking ahead with wide eyes, had no idea they were just above him. Delia’s hand dropped quietly away from Lili’s mouth leaving a smudge of dirt just above her lip. She reached for Lili’s shoulder again. They mustn’t move a budge now._

_They looked quietly at each other, wide-eyed, and then down at Edwin. Their faces were beet red, their brows were beaded with sweat...a combination of heated anticipation and lack of oxygen._

_And then Edwin cried out, “Come on! You always do this! It’s not fair! I’m telling mam!” And he burst into frustrated, sobbing tears._

_“Aw, now,” Delia called out calmly from above as she lowered herself. “You know we’re only playing.” Her arms and legs were all fully extended as she hung for a moment from the limb, her feet several inches above Edwin’s head._

_Edwin looked up, red-faced, and swatted at her feet. “You always do that. It’s not fair,” he cried angrily through wet, snotty sniffles._

_Delia dropped down to the ground next to him, landing soundly in a deep crouching position with a soft thud. She smiled proudly for a second and then stood up straight and put her hand on Edwin’s back. “I’m sorry, bud. We didn’t meant to scare you.”_

_Lili was making her way down now--slowly, carefully, branch by branch. Delia looked up and caught her eyes. They grinned widely at each other. And then Delia reached up and helped ease Lili’s body-high jump from the lowest branch. Pleased with themselves in spite of poor Edwin’s obvious frustration, Delia and Lili each wrapped an arm around a still sniffling Edwin--one on each side of him--for the long walk home._

…

“Wake up, my sleepy, Welsh sunshine!” Amy called out as she switched on the light.

Delia’s eyes cracked open a sliver and then immediately closed. She groaned and pulled her pillow over her head. “It’s too bright. Turn it off,” she pleaded. 

“Sorry, sleepy head. We have to get a move on if we’re going to make it to our shuttle in time. You remember what they said, ‘The shuttle’s leaving from the curb at 7:55 a.m. on the dot, with or without us’!”

“Hold on. 7:55?” Delia was starting to get her bearings. “No, no...our shuttle doesn’t leave at 7:55, it leaves at 6:55!” She jumped out of bed. “Crap! What time is it?!”

“Oh, fuck,” Amy answered her. “It’s 6:35. Hurry! Get your shit together!”

…

By some miracle, Delia and Amy managed to dress themselves and wrangle all of their clothes and papers and phones and laptops and chargers and wallets and toiletries and make it to the lobby right at 6:55. “Shit, we forgot we have to get them to split the room charge. Run out and tell the shuttle guy we’re here and I’ll make sure we’re all settled up with the front desk!” Amy nudged Delia in the direction of the front door with both of their suitcases. “Hurry!”

Delia’s head was spinning, and she was starting to wonder if she weren’t still a little drunk from the night before. Her stomach lurched, but she did as she was told and ran for the door--huge, stuffed-to-the-brim pack on her back, two rolling suitcases bumping inelegantly behind her. As she broke through the front door, brushing past people right and left (”I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”), she made a mental note to be irritated with Amy. Why had she been sent to run for the shuttle with both their bags?!

When they were finally both safely on the shuttle and on their way to the airport, Delia started taking inventory of the night before. So, apparently, did Amy.

“I can’t believe you just ditched me last night in the lounge. I was worried! You said you were going to the bathroom and then totally ghosted, didn’t answer any of my texts!”

Delia looked wearily at her phone and saw that she had several unread messages from Amy. And then she recalled what had happened after she left the lounge. Oh, man, she thought to herself. That’s was definitely a low point. Thank god for the kindness of strangers. If Amy had found her in the hallway outside their room instead of that woman, she would never have heard the end of it.

Delia sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I had a little too much to drink. I only meant to run to the bathroom, but before I knew it, I was headed back to the room.”

…

Delia dozed off and on during the flight home. She was feeling nostalgic, like she missed her mam. It had been so long since she’d been home to see her and her dad. And Edwin. And Lili, she missed Lili the most. She felt uneasy and longed, more than anything, for the peace and quiet of home. She told herself that she would definitely schedule a trip home this summer once she had defended her dissertation and, hopefully, successfully concluded her job search.

…

As Delia walked slowly home from her lunch with Dr. Mount, she tried to recall all that she could of that night at MLA last year and the morning after. She was trying to reframe her experience of the woman who had helped her with the new knowledge of who it had been. The woman had been kind, if matter-of-fact, about it all, and Delia had been grateful for that. And that woman...had been Patsy Mount. She still couldn’t believe it. She had had an intellectual crush on her ever since reading her first book in grad school--it was so bold, so confident for a first book. Delia found that very sexy. And then seeing her give that talk at MLA? And now having the unusually amazing fortune to have been hired into the same department as her… 

It was all just so much. 

She thought about home again and how she had told herself she would definitely find a way to make it back before she started her new job, how things with Amy had gone from cool to increasingly unpleasant to worse after they had returned from the MLA. How she had become preoccupied with concluding her job search--all those campus visits in the middle of winter, final revisions to her dissertation, the book proposal, the move, finding a place to live. She thought about how she had never made that trip home and promised herself that she would make sure she did so at the end of this term. She needed the reassurance of her life outside of this one, to reconnect with her roots, her people.

When she got back to her cottage, Pearl lept clumsily at her and whined with excitement. She twisted and wiggled and yelped. Delia dropped her things just inside the door, fell to her knees, and let Pearl come to her, lick her face. She put her hands down to the floor in a mock play position and looked up at Pearl expectantly. 

“Walkies?” Delia asked Pearl, though it was more of a taunt than a genuine question. She knew the answer. Pearl yelped and spun in a full circle just an inch from the ground. She mirrored Delia’s play position and yelped again. Yes, she wanted walkies. 

“Okay, girl. Good gurrrl, Pearl,” Delia grabbed Pearl by the scruff of her neck and kissed her head. She smiled as she stood up--a walk with Pearl always made her feel better.

…

When Delia got home from their walk, she was much more relaxed and clear-headed. She got Pearl a treat, poured herself a tall glass of water, and checked her phone.

Hmm, she had a missed call from Dr. Mount, from Patsy, from “Woman who helped you at MLA” (she shook her head and made a mental note to update Patsy’s contact info). That’s odd, she thought to herself. Something must be wrong--why would she have called so soon after they had lunch? And she hadn’t left a message.

Delia texted her back. 

> Hey, it’s Delia. Is everything okay?  
> Looks like you just called me? I didn’t see a message, so…  
> Call or text me back if you want. I’m here now. By my phone.

Delia waited for several minutes...no reply. She was just about to write the whole thing off as an accidental call and then a text came through.

> Hey. I’m really sorry to bother you.  
> I have something to tell you, but would rather not do it by text.  
> Do you have a minute to talk?

Delia was totally intrigued. What in the world…? She couldn’t begin to imagine. She texted back immediately…

> Absolutely.  
> I hope everything’s okay. Call now, if you like.  
> Or, I’m at home. Stop by?

Shit. Maybe that was too much, asking her to the house. Delia waited anxiously for her phone to ring or another text to come through. A few minutes passed and then…

> Everything’s fine. But maybe it would be good if we could chat face to face quickly.

Delia’s heart was racing because she literally had no clue how there could be more to say between them, especially nothing that required a spontaneous face-to-face chat.

> No problem.  
> 352 Chainbridge Rd. Small, yellow cottage. Last on the left before the park.

> Okay, thanks.  
> 30 min. Okay?

> Perfect. See you then.

Delia scanned the room around her. Open floor plans be damned. There were papers, running shoes, leashes, her bike, helmet, coffee cups everywhere--and all in view from just inside the front door. She quickly ran around the room, removing things from surfaces, clearing, cleaning, shoving things under the couch. She put the kettle on. It was a warm day, but she had nothing to offer but tea, so…

Patsy arrived just over 30 minutes later with a slightly sheepish, half smile on her face, her head tilted in apology, “I’m so sorry to bother you, Delia. I feel like we’ve gotten off to such an awkward start. I truly hesitate to make things worse, but I feel I must come clean about something.”

Delia’s heart sank. Oh, fuck. She knew it. She knew she must have said or done something else that night. Shit.

But instead of freaking out outwardly, her Welsh hardiness took over. There was nothing that couldn’t be overcome with a little determination and elbow grease. “Oh, I see.” she said. “Well, let’s sort it out, then. Come on in. Tea?” Delia offered.

“Yes, thank you. That would be lovely….You have a great place. I love these old cottages.”

“Thanks,” Delia said as she made her way to retrieve their tea. She was grateful once again for Patsy’s keen ability to patch through awkward moments. 

Delia returned with a fresh pot of tea on a tray and two steaming cups. She placed the tray on the table before the sofa as they each took up one end of it. Patsy reached for one of the teas and sipped slowly. Delia mirrored her, anxious.

“You see,” Patsy started. “That night when I helped you. At the MLA? Well, no, not that exactly. The next day? Actually, since that night…?” She paused and looked up apologetically at Delia who was now so totally confused and nervous that she was struggling not to burst out laughing inappropriately. Hold it together, Busby, she told herself and bit the inside of her bottom lip.

“It’s just that,” Patsy continued. “I feel so bad about not being more straightforward with you when you entered my office. I should have just said that I recognized you. And I feel...now...like it might be a further dishonesty of some kind if I didn’t share with you that...well, I really don’t mean to be odd about it...it’s just that...oh, geez--I don’t fully understand it myself.”

Okay, out with it, Mount, Patsy thought to herself. Just say it, stop blabbering. “Okay,” she paused to take a deep breath, “You see, the thing is...I responded as I did to you in my office when we met because--gosh, this sounds even more ridiculous coming out of my mouth now than I thought it might--because I was feeling...angry?” 

She said it as though she didn’t quite believe it herself, as though she were testing it out as a theory, waiting for Delia to confirm it to be true. “I mean--”

“Oh, dear,” Delia interjected, “I knew you were angry.”

“Did you? Okay, I’m sorry--I’m really not doing this very well. You see, it just that...it wasn’t anything you did, exactly--I mean, it kind of was, but...you said something as I was leaving your room that night at the MLA. And something about the words struck a chord in me that has just stayed with me ever since.” Patsy thought about the words Delia had said (“You really are a sort of angel. And the tragedy is, no one will ever know that either”) and made a split-second decision to keep things a bit more simple.

“Well, you see, it’s kind of silly now that I think about it, but...you called me ‘Pats’ when I was helping you. A few times. And so, I just assumed...I thought you knew who I was, would remember me. And then, the next morning, when you bumped into me and then when we met in my office last week…”

“I bumped into you the next morning?! Oh, dear. I was in such a rush...I was still half drunk, I’m afraid, and didn’t realize... Wait, I called you ‘Pats’? That is odd. I don’t recall ever knowing it was you who helped me. In fact, I know I didn’t know it was you. I’m sure of it. I...would have remembered if it were you. And even if I had, I’m not sure why I would have presumed such familiarity...” 

Delia looked directly at Patsy as she said this, trying to assure her of her genuineness and thinking to herself again with a different emphasis, ‘I would definitely have remembered if I knew it were...you.’ And then she smiled nervously, revealing a rare shyness in her that direct eye contact with Patsy seemed to trigger.

“I know it’s all a bit much,” Patsy continued. “I’m so sorry to make anything of it now, but...it seemed as though I already had, and so, after our lunch, I thought a bit more about it all and how bad you seemed to be feeling… And at first, I thought I ought just let it all go because I didn’t want to make things more awkward. But then I reconsidered and thought I ought to own up to my own part in things, explain it a bit more, and perhaps it would...level the field a bit?” 

Again, she said this as if she were testing a theory and wanted Delia to confirm it to be true.

“Anyway, you deserve to not have your chair acting foolish, so...I can’t make any promises mind, except that, going forward, I will do my best,” she laughed a bit, trying to lighten things. Delia smiled appreciatively. 

“And I hope,” Patsy continued, “that if you can forgive me for being foolish...that we might really now do as I said at lunch and start fresh, as if...well, as if we were--I mean, I know I am also chair right now--but as if we were also two new colleagues who have much to admire in each other.” Delia’s heart jumped at the words “who have much to admire in each other.” Was it possible that Dr. Mount, Patsy, really thought of her that way?

Patsy took another sip of her tea and placed the cup back down on the saucer. As she did, Delia noticed a slight quiver in her hand. She couldn’t really pretend to understand why she might have the power to elicit such a response from someone like Dr. Mount, but she could certainly see when someone was struggling. So, it turns out Dr. Patience Mount is human, after all--not a superwoman, immune from such things as nervousness, shame, and emotional complexity. 

Delia leaned forward, reached for Patsy’s hand, which was resting on her own knee, and steadied it. “Thank you,” she said. “I want nothing more than for us to start fresh, new colleagues who have much to admire in each other. You seem like such a kind soul. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your honesty.”

Patsy looked down at their hands and placed her other hand over Delia’s, pressing it lightly to show her appreciation, and the women smiled warmly at each other, again finding quiet comfort in each other’s presence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 7: Sarah McLachlan’s cover of “Blackbird”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3VrggQW7tk)


	8. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm just giving into my current pull to write for this more often. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up (with work commitments ramping up a bit), but until then... Enjoy! xx

_Delia was staring off into some middle space, her eyes slightly unfocused._

_“Nurse Busby! What is the primary treatment goal for acute glomerulonephritis?!”_

_“I’m sorry, Sister. Can you please repeat the question?”_

_“The primary treatment goal for acute glomerulonephritis, Nurse Busby. What. Is. It?”_

_“Oh, uh, acute glomerulonephritis…Okay. Um, treatment of acute glomerulonephritis is mainly supportive, because there is no specific therapy for renal disease. When acute glomerulonephritis is associated with chronic infections, the underlying infections must be treated.”_

_“Thank you, Nurse Busby. You can go.” Delia nodded gratefully and turned to leave. She lowered her head as she walked to gather her things. ‘Well, I made it through another day,’ she thought to herself. ‘At least I have that going for me.’ She knew life in the city, away from home, wasn’t going to be easy, but she had no idea how lonely it would be._

_“You’re really testing her patience, you know,” a voice just behind her said quietly. “You ought to pay more attention--you don’t want to end up on the naughty list.” Delia turned slowly and found a woman with deep blue eyes and shockingly red hair smiling mischievously just over her shoulder._

_“I’m sorry,” Delia turned fully around, “and who are you?”_

_“Oh, uh...Nurse Mount. Patsy! We have hygiene seminar together with Sister Magdalena,” she explained eagerly. Delia looked at the woman but said nothing._

_“...We met several weeks ago?” Patsy continued. “...You asked me for a pencil?” And then she winced playfully. “You never gave it back, I’m afraid.”_

_Delia got that this was an attempt at humor and found it perfect and endearing, but you wouldn’t have known it from the blank expression on her face. She was trying to sort out how she could possibly have forgotten meeting this gorgeous woman who stood before her now._

_“Well, I’m sorry about the pencil,” Delia said seriously--she was looking at Patsy’s mouth, as if it might jog her memory of their first meeting. And then she looked up, “It was…” she said as if choosing her words very carefully (though, truth be told, she wasn’t thinking much about the words at all), “very kind of you to loan it to me.”_

_Patsy’s smile was fading. This was not the bright-eyed, energetic Delia she had been drawn to when they first met. This woman seemed tired, deflated, and distracted._

_Delia could see Patsy’s growing disappointment that she hadn’t recalled meeting her, so she added, “I’m sure you’re perfectly lovely. Sorry, I’ve been a bit preoccupied” and flashed that wide, dimpled grin that had drawn Patsy to her when they first met._

_“Delia Busby,” she extended her hand towards Patsy._

_Patsy smiled, relieved, and took her hand. “Well, then,” Patsy teased, “I guess it’s nice to finally meet you, Nurse Busby.”_

_The women held their gaze and handshake a few beats longer than they might have with the other girls, recognizing as they did so something in each other that felt uniquely welcoming and warm, something neither were anxious to walk away from just yet._

…

“Delia?”

“Hmmm?”

“Delia.” She felt soft, warm fingers on her arm.

“Hmmm?”

“The movie’s over. You fell asleep...” 

Delia opened her eyes a crack to see Patsy sitting next to her. And then she smiled and hid her face in the crook of her arm. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry.” 

Delia squinted suspiciously at Patsy who was smiling warmly at her now--perhaps a little too warmly, Delia considered. She had apparently found Delia’s falling asleep on her couch endearing, but it seemed now to Delia that she was also trying not to laugh. 

“I can see you trying to find the words to mock me, Mount,” Delia observed. “Go ahead, I deserve it. How long have I been asleep?”

“Well, let’s see. You seemed awake for the part where she decided to join the Marines, and...I think you may have made it through until she decided to shave her head. After that, it appeared to be lights out, I’m afraid.” Patsy winced as if to suggest pity for the embarrassment that Delia ought to feel.

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Delia prodded, “Did her hair ever grow back?”

Patsy picked up the small couch pillow between them and swung it playfully at Delia’s shoulder. “Glad my couch could be of service to you. And Pearl,” she gestured to Delia’s right. Pearl was stretched out lengthwise with her head in Delia’s lap.

“Oh, Pearl,” Delia observed, “Get down, girl. This isn’t your couch!” 

Patsy smiled, “She’s fine--leave her. The two of you sleeping here were a vision. Speaking of visions...I could swear you were moaning just before I roused you. What in the world were you dreaming about, Busby?” 

Delia’s eyes widened as she recalled, vaguely, that she’d been talking with some gorgeous redhead with soft lips just before Patsy woke her, and then she realized Patsy was just having her on again. 

“Like I would tell you,” Delia teased. “In any case, you must think me narcoleptic or something...it seems I’m always falling asleep when we meet up late at night.” She flashed her bright Busby grin.

“Well, it did cross my mind that you must find me an awful bore. You’ll remember, after all, that we’ve established that you slept through our entire first meeting--even the part where I took you to bed!” Patsy winked playfully and got up off the couch.

This was how it was now between them. They had become fast friends, had found a way to bond over their initial awkwardness, which had since become an endless source of amusement for them. 

The truth was, Delia adored Patsy, found her anything but boring, and Patsy knew it. Delia had made several new friends since the year began--she was grateful she had ended up in such a collegial department--but Patsy Mount was the one she always wanted to be with. Their respective busy travel and teaching schedules meant they only got to hang out once every couple weeks or so, but they both looked forward to their time together. The friendly intimacy between them had developed quite organically since the afternoon Patsy had come to Delia’s house early in the term and confessed what Delia now liked to tease was Patsy’s “deep-seated, unfounded hatred” for her. 

Delia stretched and reached for her phone to see what time it was. She noticed when she did this that she had a missed call from her mam. She opened her voicemail and listened to the message. 

>>> “Delia, it’s your father. Call me.”

Delia’s expression fell, her face lost its color, and she stood up and looked at Patsy.

“What is it?” Patsy asked from across the room.

“It’s, uh...it’s...my mam called...left a message...didn’t say much, but...Pats, I’m afraid something’s happened to my dad.” Delia looked at her phone again, “Shit, what time is it? I guess I can’t very well call back now. It’ll be the middle of the night there.” 

“Oh god, I should go.” Delia started nervously moving about the room gathering the few things she had brought with her. As she did so, Patsy could see that her hands were shaking.

“Delia,” Patsy stepped towards her, reached out gently for her arm. She waited for Delia’s eyes to settle, to stop searching the room as if the answer to why her mother had called could be found somewhere in Patsy’s living room. 

Delia looked down at the ground in front of her, and then up at Patsy. Her eyes were glassy as if she were on the verge of tears. “I should go,” she said again, “but...” 

“Oh, Deels,” Patsy took her hand. “Don’t go now. Call your mum from here. If something’s happened, she won’t mind that it’s an odd hour. Or don’t call now if you think it best, wait a bit, but don’t go home like this.”

Delia dropped Pearl’s leash. She leaned towards Patsy, her arms straight down at her sides, and Patsy wrapped her arms around the younger woman, pulled her close. 

“Something’s wrong, Pats, I know it.” Delia said into Patsy’s shoulder. “And I haven’t been home in over two years. If something has happened to my dad…” Tears were streaming down her face now. 

...

Two days later, Delia was on a plane back to Wales. It was not the trip she had planned to take at the end of the term--just a few weeks later, not the homecoming she had hoped for. She was going to say goodbye to her dad, to pay her respects, to be with her mother and Edwin.

Edwin met her at the train station. His hug was stiff, and he was quiet. As he loaded Delia’s bag into the boot of the car he said, “Lili’s in town. Mam says she’ll be there tomorrow for the service.” Delia nodded quietly and got into the passenger seat. 

…

After the service, after the gathering at the house, after most everyone had left, Lili and Edwin and Delia sat side-by-side on the formal couch in the Busby’s sitting room. Edwin and Delia were watching their mam move about the room, cleaning up plates and cups. “Right, well…” Lili proposed, “We should help your mam clean up.” She paused. “And then...pub?” 

Delia looked across Edwin at Lili and saw a familiar impish smile beginning on her lips--often inappropriate, always welcome. Oh, how Delia had missed that smile. 

…

A few pints later at the pub, Lili was still trying to help ease the tension from the day’s emotional stress. “So, Busby, how’s America treating you? Edwin says you finally let that horrid Amy go. Drewgi.” 

“A bit harsh.” Delia raised her eyebrows and drained half her remaining pint. “You never even met her.” 

“Pffft,” Lili added, “On principle, I despise anyone who gets you to themselves for that long and then proves unworthy. Besides, I can tell you’ve moved on. Who has your fancy now, young Delia?” Lili elbowed her.

“Oh, you know I’ll only ever have eyes for you,” Delia winked. 

“Cheers to that, mate,” Lili approved, raising her glass...always the flirt.

Edwin rolled his eyes. “You two have been dancing around this since we were kids. Delia has been in love with you and only you since she started puberty,” he winced. “And you have broken her heart more times than I can count. I don’t know what you two see in each other.” 

Delia’s brow furrowed and she craned her neck around to scold Edwin. “Easy, mate,” she checked him. “Besides, that’s not entirely true. I’ve loved others,” she mumbled into her pint, half acknowledging he was right.

Lili laughed and winked at Delia. 

“What?” Delia protested. “I have, too! I hate you both. And I’m still angry with you,” she gestured towards Lili with her pint glass, “for stealing Miss Barnaby from me.” 

Miss Barnaby had been their very buxom young teaching assistant in Year 7. She wore short skirts, had legs for miles, and soft, wavy blond hair. She was only six years older than them, and it was Delia’s crush on Miss Barnaby that had first made Delia consider she might be a lesbian.

Years later, while she was at uni, Lili had run into Miss Barnaby at the pub. Never one to pass up an opportunity for mischief, Lili had bought her a pint, started chatting her up, and...several pints later, they had been caught by Lili’s boyfriend snogging around the corner from the pub. 

When Gareth found them, Miss Barnaby’s back was against the wall and she had one leg wrapped tightly around Lili’s waist. The only thing between them was Lili’s hand, which was fully up the older woman’s shirt. Gareth had been thrilled by the sight at first and had offered to join them, but they had sent him off for cigarettes and were gone when he returned.

“Ah, Miss Barnaby,” Lili mused. “Still have fond memories of that shag,” she bragged. And then winking at both Delia and Edwin and raising her glass, “To Miss Barnaby!”

Delia and Edwin rolled their eyes. “You’re such a shit,” Delia grumbled and then, reluctantly, as if having to concede that Lili was very, very good at being a shit, she raised her glass to her old friend.

It was true that Delia had had feelings for Lili all those years ago and mostly since. And there had been repeated heartbreak over it for her, since Lili--a flirt through and through and usually quite open to dalliances of all kinds--had always held the line with Delia. They had only kissed the once when they were twelve, and both had burst out laughing after, though Delia had secretly wanted to do it again, immediately.

What Delia didn’t know was that it hadn’t just been she who had had such feelings. And Lili had had her own version of heartbreak about it over the years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 8: The Knocks’ “Classic” (feat. Powers)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emOKaGi8u5U)  
> 
> 
> Note: The videos you might find for some of these if you google them could ruin their effect in relation to this fic, so my strong recommendation is to just listen if you can and not watch the videos--close your eyes, open a new tab while it plays… xx


	9. The Return of Dr. Mount

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's one for the weekend! This chapter was instigated by the Lili in Scribbs, but I dedicate it to the Lili in all of you. Happy reading! xx

Patsy was fully naked, straddling Monique’s bare stomach. She pulled out of their deep kiss, sucking Monique's supple bottom lip taut and into her mouth...drawing out of her a faint, unintentional whimper as she did so. 

Patsy smiled because she knew the deep, aching desire that had prompted that whimper--she had enjoyed it many times the summer they had dated in grad school. And several times since. 

Patsy sat up and leaned back a bit, looking down at Monique and grinding into her hips, teasingly, before leaning towards the nightstand to reach for a hair tie. She slid her fingers through the tight band, pitched her head back to gather her long locks and secured them in a messy bun. 

Monique ran her hand slowly up Patsy’s smooth stomach to her chest--enjoying every curve along the way--and cupped one of Patsy's perfect breasts admiringly. And then, watching her face as she did so, she rolled Patsy's hard nipple between her thumb and forefinger, pinching it until she saw Patsy wince. 

“H’up,” Patsy drew back sharply in pain, seized Monique's wrist and pinned it back. “Wicked.” Patsy scolded playfully. And then she grabbed Monique’s other wrist and held it back with the first, on the pillow just above Monique's head. Patsy was the one on top, but Monique had the incomparable Patsy Mount back right where she wanted her, just inches above her lips. 

They only met up once every couple years and didn’t always end up in bed together. On this occasion, they had been having a drink in the lobby bar after a long day of conferencing and dinner with mutual friends from grad school. Monique had excused herself to “freshen up,” and much to her delight, Patsy had followed her into the restroom, locked the door behind them, and kissed her passionately. 

They had always had great sex when they got together, and Monique had missed seeing this side of Patsy. But tonight, there seemed to be an extra edge to Patsy's desire. She had wanted only to pleasure Monique during their fast and furious ladies room encounter--had refused to let Monique touch her at all. And then as Monique was coming down from what would prove to be the first of many orgasms that night, Patsy proposed they pop up to her room where they could “take their time a bit more and play for a while.”

Monique loved feeling Patsy's weight on top of her and was trying to take in every last bit of her now, to soak in the fullness of the spectacular woman who seemed to want nothing but her for the moment. 

Patsy watched with delight as Monique started squirming on the bed, lifting her hips and trying to press against Patsy’s warmth and wetness. It wasn't enough--Monique couldn’t take it anymore. She closed her eyes, “Please,” she begged Patsy. “Please...”

…

Halfway around the world, Lili was trying to talk Delia into coming back with her to London when she returned. “It’s been ages since you came to visit. Barbara misses you…” 

“Barbara? Your cat?” Delia looked at Lili incredulously. 

“What, cats don’t have feelings?” Lili feigned outrage. Delia shook her head. 

“You know I have a real job now, right? I can’t come, Lil’. I have to get back and teach my classes.”

Delia and Lili were walking hand in hand through the meadow behind Delia's parents’ house. It was a thing they had done since they were kids, holding hands like this. As they had gotten older, it had made Delia long for more, but at some point, she had been forced to accept that that just wasn't what this was about and so had settled into just enjoying the closeness with Lili for what it was--a warm, affectionate, decades-long friendship.

Lili asked again about Delia’s love life, and Delia tried to do what she had long ago found was the easiest way of dealing with painful “love life” discussions with Lili, deflect with humor. In the context of everything that had happened in the past several days, however, on this occasion, Delia just couldn’t. She was too emotionally exhausted.

“Why do you keep asking me who I’m seeing?” Delia finally said. “You must be bored with...what his name this time?”

“Oh, please.” Lili said. “I’m always bored with them--doesn’t matter the name.”

“Lil’,” Delia said seriously. “I can’t this time. Really. I love you--you know I do, but...don’t you ever get tired of it?”

“Tired of what?” Lili pretended not to know exactly what Delia meant, but she knew--of course she knew. She’d been living it for years.

“Lil’, look,” Delia said, stopping and facing her, still holding her hand, “I want you to be happy, but...all joking aside, Edwin is wrong about a lot, but he’s dead right about one thing: Being close to you throughout all of your hook-ups and exploration over years has caused me more heartbreak than I have ever been able to admit to you. And now…”

Lili waited for Delia to finish, but Delia couldn’t settle on what came next. She had expected Lili to interrupt her with an edgy comeback or joke--that’s how this usually went. And when Lili didn’t, Delia’s mind went blank. They just stood looking at each other for a long second.

“Delia,” Lili sighed. She sat in the tall grass and then rolled onto her back. Delia stood for a second and then joined her friend. “Lili,” Delia sighed, mimicking her.

Lili turned her head sharply towards Delia. “You know I’ve always had a thing for you, right? I mean, I was having fun--I did what I wanted. But with you, I never could.” 

“I know,” Delia said, looking at Lili. “It only ever made it worse.” Lili reached out and pushed a strand of hair behind Delia’s ear, and they smiled weakly at each other. 

…

Patsy was dressed in her usual professional best when she entered the meeting--heels, just-above-the-knee-length skirt, supple blouse that revealed just a faint shadow of her bra and the superlative breasts they held underneath. 

Delia was sitting at the other end of the long seminar table in the meeting room, and when Patsy entered, the first thing Delia noticed were legs. Patsy, Dr. Mount, was standing just inside the doorway talking to her administrative assistant about the timeline for the hiring process and the packets she wanted him to put together before the meeting concluded for those assembled. 

She looked up mid-sentence, caught Delia watching her, and smiled. Delia flushed red and pretended to have dropped a pen on the floor that needed to be retrieved. Immediately. 

It’s true that she and Patsy were close now, that just the week before, she had been in Patsy’s arms crying about her dad, but it was different seeing Patsy here, seeing her be Dr. Mount. 

Maybe it was a relic of her very first, schoolgirl crush on Miss Barnaby, but she loved seeing Dr. Mount...handling things. She loved the way she subtly compelled the respect of everyone (young, old, female, male, accomplished, less so). She simply couldn’t get enough of the strength and presence this woman casually commanded in professional contexts. 

“Hi, everyone,” Patsy began as she put her bag down next to the chair at the other end of the table. Her voice was upbeat, professional, effortless and immediately silenced the room. 

“Thanks for coming out early today for this. I do apologize for the late notice, but the Dean just approved this new line and we wanted to get started as soon as possible. So, as you know, the position is for a 20th-Century Americanist. And since we’re posting this so late, things will need to move much more quickly than usual. 

We have just this week to finalize the job ad before we need to get that out, and then we’ll have just another couple weeks before the letters and CVs start coming in. I expect we’ll get somewhere between 200 and, well, as many as 350 or so applications--hard to say, since it’s a late posting…”

…

When the meeting ended, Delia lingered. She had her phone out and was trying to reply to a text while also distractedly putting her papers in her bag. 

“Delia,” she heard Patsy say. She didn’t notice having done so herself, but she must have jumped a bit when she heard her senior colleague say her name because the next thing Patsy said to her was, “Sorry--didn’t mean to startle you.” 

Delia looked up and found Patsy standing right next to her, a good three inches taller than last she had seen her because of the heels. “How was your trip home?” Patsy asked, she tilted her head slightly as if to express concern.

“It was okay,” Delia said, “Hard. Sad. Good to see mam and Edwin.” And Lili, she thought to herself--why hadn’t she said that?

“How was your conference?” Delia asked. 

“Oh, you know how those things are,” Patsy deflected, an image of her and Monique in bed together flashed through her mind. “Busy. Caught up with an old friend from grad school who I only get to see once every couple years.” She paused. “So...we should catch up properly later, or this weekend? Maybe take Pearl for a walk?”

“Uh, sure. That would be great,” Delia said. “Maybe this weekend--I’m still trying to get caught up with my class prep.”

“Makes sense. I'll text you later this week. Hang in there,” Patsy said and turned to walk out. 

Delia suddenly felt horrible. Why hadn’t she mentioned her house guest? Why hadn’t she just said then and there that Lili had come back with her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 9: LCD Soundsystem's “Pow Pow”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYCV2zybQoI)


	10. OUTRO MIXTAPE (Intermission)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that we're about halfway through this fic (about), I wanted to start a mixtape with all the outros to date in case anyone was interested. I have been playing around with some ways of doing this, and here's one I think will work pretty well. It's working for me in the preview, but let me know if it doesn't work for you.
> 
> I'll update it as I add chapters/songs, so SPOILER ALERT if this is your first time reading...the "Full Mixtape" links from here on out will include outros for later chapters... If you're coming to this late, you can click instead on the individual song link at the end of each chapter to avoid potential spoilers in the full mixtape.

Here's a direct link to the mixtape on Hypster: [Boundaries Outro Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181#pMrO6M6J5LlDbsj8.18%20)  



	11. The Kiss

Patsy Mount was many wonderful things, but she wasn’t what most people would consider “sporty.” She did, however, have a couple physical outlets in addition to smoking the occasional cigarette and opportunistic sex with one of her many friends with benefits around the world. When Patsy was feeling like she needed to calm herself, for example, she sometimes joined a yoga class. Or, when she knew that wasn’t going to be enough, when she had such an extreme excess of pent up energy she needed to exorcise, she would run. And run. And run. Literally and figuratively, she felt like running was her last and best defense against being consumed by her inordinate energy about something--or someone.

It was dusk and she had just finished a marathon day of meetings (starting with a very early morning meeting of a newly formed hiring committee) and then she had taught a three-hour graduate class. Ordinarily, she would be exhausted and might go home, pour herself a glass of wine, make dinner, and read for a bit or watch something. But tonight, she was anything but tired. For several weeks, in fact, she had felt an almost boundless energy and appetite. She was in the final stages of completing her new book, Woke, and had been traveling and teaching and managing her chair duties and yet...she had a sharp edge to her and an almost insatiable desire for more of everything she wanted any part of. 

When Patsy got home, she quickly swapped out her heels and skirt for her running gear and headed out towards the wooded park just a mile away--the park, not accidentally, that was less than half a block from Delia’s house. Though Delia had told her she was behind on her class prep when Patsy proposed they catch up this evening and Patsy didn’t want to crowd her, she also knew that Delia often liked to walk Pearl around this time of day in the park and so thought that if they just happened to run into each other, that would be a nice bonus to the end of her day, a welcome distraction from herself. 

If Patsy were being honest with herself, she had also been missing Delia. The last time they were alone, Patsy had been consoling her friend. She had held Delia tight as she cried, had pushed her hair back off her forehead, pressed her cheek into the top of the shorter woman’s head. And then, in the 36 hours between the time Delia had left Patsy’s that night and the time she left for Wales, they hadn’t met up at all. Delia had been busy packing and getting things in order for her classes so that she could take the time away, and Patsy had had to leave town to give another conference keynote. So they had gone their separate ways almost immediately and had had little contact while apart.

Patsy thought to herself as she ran that she really liked Delia. Being with Delia was never boring--she had such a great energy, was so positive and vivacious. And Patsy loved her unique combination of humble honesty and cleverness. Though she downplayed it a bit and was so unpretentious that one might not notice it if one wasn’t paying attention, Delia was brilliant--a quickly rising star. But that wasn’t all, as the months had gone by, and especially lately, Patsy had also developed a deep affection for her friend. She was so warm, so...adorable. And then there were those times Patsy had caught Delia looking at her a certain way...

Generally speaking, Patsy knew she had a strong, often positive effect on people. She wasn’t blind--she saw them (men, women, younger, older) watching her a bit more intensely than they did others when she spoke, laughing a little harder at her causal attempts at humor, or she caught them staring at her legs or following her bottom as she walked by. She noticed, and she was more or less used to it. Sometimes it creeped her out or made her roll her eyes to herself if it was particularly unwanted, but if she was interested, she usually didn't hesitate to respond in whatever way she felt appropriate to the moment. 

Several times, she had caught Delia watching her in the way that people did when they desired her and couldn’t help themselves. Patsy had raised her eyes from a conversation with another to find Delia lingering over her legs when she walked into a room or getting caught up in the dark fold in her blouse where her breasts disappeared under her bra and shirt. And in those moments, Patsy had felt an almost painful urge to be physical with Delia, to let Delia see and touch all of the parts she seemed not to be able to get enough of with her eyes.

The thing was that, with Delia, she also felt very strongly that she had to fight such urges when they arose. Patsy had a long history of starting things with people because she was caught up in a moment of intense passion, and she didn’t want to be reckless in that way with Delia. Something about how she felt about Delia otherwise, outside of those moments, made Patsy feel as though there were no way she could ever casually or impulsively start anything with her. No matter how close they had gotten and no matter how much it was her usual way of being, she was committed to her promise to Delia back at the start of the term that she would do her best to not act “foolish” with her again.

And then there was the other thing. Though it was still very hard for her to wrap her mind around, Patsy had felt for months like she had both a future and a past with Delia, like her feelings for Delia and their connection had kind of inevitability about them. It wasn’t that she felt that the closeness they had been developing over the last several months was indestructible, just that it all felt somehow bigger than any one moment. It often seemed to her like their movements through the world were coordinated in some way, as if their futures and pasts were bound together and always would be. She had never felt anything like it before--she cherished it. And so, as much as she generally enjoyed doing so, she didn’t want to destroy that by giving into her baser instincts and physical cravings with Delia. 

This is what was going through Patsy’s thoughts as she ran, much faster than usual, through the chilly November evening. As she approached the park, she ran by Delia’s house and noticed the lights were out. That could mean she had gone out somewhere else or, as Patsy found herself hoping, it could mean that she had already started her walk and was in the park. 

Patsy had her earphones in and her music on shuffle. As she passed Delia’s house, Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” came on. She cranked the volume and picked up the pace. A couple hundred yards into the park, the woods got thicker and the light fell; the path took a sharp turn to the left and started down a small, steep hill. Patsy’s momentum increased even more as she descended the hill. Enjoying the feeling of her speed and feeling her pent up energy dissipating, Patsy smiled and then looked up in the distance just a bit past the bottom of the hill. When she did so, she caught sight of something that immediately wiped the smile off her face and stopped her dead in her tracks. She blinked a few times and wiped the sweat away from her eyes as though doing so would make it easier for her to see what she was now becoming more certain she was seeing.

It was Delia. And...another woman facing her. They were leaning on a railing at the overlook near the edge of the reservoir. Off to the side, Pearl was following a scent in the leaves and low brush. Patsy didn’t recognize the other woman. She was a good bit taller than Delia--blond, edgy looking, pretty. She was wearing a leather jacket and ripped skinny jeans. 

Patsy stood there, transfixed. This woman was--oh, god, Patsy felt her heart sink--she was holding Delia’s hand in hers. Patsy couldn’t believe her eyes. Was Delia seeing someone? Had she been seeing someone all this time and Patsy just hadn’t noticed? It didn’t seem like Delia to keep this kind of thing to herself. But this woman was clearly someone Delia knew well--this was not a first date. They appeared to be having a serious conversation. 

Patsy told herself that she shouldn’t snoop like some creep in the woods, that she ought to just turn around and leave before it got too weird that she was standing in the middle of the path watching them from a distance. As she was thinking this, Daniela Andrade’s beautiful, haunting cover of “Creep” started playing through her headphones as if mocking her ("I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here..."). An overly dramatic ex making a last ditch effort to win her back had gifted it to her. Fucking Noelle, Patsy thought as she muted it. 

Patsy felt her heart racing as she watched Delia and the woman having an intimate moment. And then she noticed a surge of feeling like the anger she had felt all those months ago the morning after first encountering Delia at the MLA. Talk about foolish, she thought to herself. It was completely ridiculous for her to feel as she did now. Patsy had no claim on Delia. And it wasn’t like she hadn't just come from a weekend of doing quite a bit more than holding hands with Monique. Come on, Mount, she chided herself, trying to regain control over her thoughts.

But nothing she could say to herself could stop her heart from breaking as she watched them. More than anything in this moment, she suddenly realized, she wanted to be that woman. She wanted to be holding Delia’s hand, wanted to be facing her on a cool night in the park as the sun set by the reservoir. She wanted to be the one looking into Delia’s eyes, to have Delia looking into hers. She wanted...Delia. 

Without thinking about it, she stepped off to the side of the trail so that she was partially hidden by a tree. She continued to watch them, wide-eyed and rapt. It now seemed to Patsy that maybe Delia was angry with the woman--she wasn't yelling, just gesturing emphatically as though trying to make a point she had already made several times before. This made Patsy wonder--hope, really--that perhaps Delia might be grateful for a save. Maybe the woman was more interested, was pressing Delia, and Delia was trying to let her down easy. She felt a surge of optimism. Maybe Patsy ought to continue her run and when she got to them, she could casually notice Delia and say hello, gauge whether or not Delia might welcome the interruption. 

She was seriously considering this option and had started to move out from behind the small tree when she saw something that nearly made her fall to the ground. It was as though she were watching a movie--or watching herself in a movie. Patsy could see herself watching the two of them, knowing what she was feeling for Delia and calling out to herself to do something, anything. "Don’t just stand there!" she was screaming at herself as she watched the scene unfolding. “No, No! Don’t do it!" she wanted herself to scream to Delia, "I’m right here!” But she didn't.

Instead, as she stood there just 50 yards away, Patsy watched through the dusky light as Delia reached for the woman’s face, gently cupped her cheek, her thumb just next to the woman’s lips. And then Patsy watched as Delia raised up onto her toes to kiss the woman. This was not the kiss of a person who wanted a save. This was a deliberate and tender kiss, a lingering kiss. 

Patsy could take no more. She turned, secured her earbuds, cranked the volume back up, and ran as fast as she could out of the park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outro for Chapter 11: [G. Love’s “Sunshine”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro_Ih0Xtw1M)
> 
> Bonus tracks: [Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I) and [Daniela Andrade’s cover of “Creep”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDjlaN-X8-0)
> 
> [Full Outro Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)


	12. Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patsy and Delia meet for a drink after Lili leaves town. Things are said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you ready? You might want to pour yourself a glass of wine and then chug it...or find a cosy corner to hide in while you read this. Things could get a little intense. Cheers. xx
> 
> Oh, and P.S. Someone pointed out to me that this fic was preventing anonymous commenting, which I guess I must have chosen to do when I started it and totally forgotten about. I think I've fixed that, so if you want to comment anonymously, you should now be able to do so.

Delia’s cheeks were flushed and her heart was racing--she couldn’t believe what had just happened. She and Lili were by the overlook at the reservoir where they had just kissed for the first time since they were twelve. They stood now in silence with their foreheads resting against each other. 

“Well,” Delia spoke first, “that was…”

“...nice,” Lili finished her sentence. 

“Yeah,” Delia agreed, though what she had been thinking was how the kiss had felt a little off. Something wasn’t right. It had felt to Delia like the right thing to do in the moment--and it had been what she had wanted with Lili for so many years--but as it was happening, she hadn’t felt about it as she thought she ought to... 

…

Lili’s flight back to London left Friday afternoon. After the kiss in the park, they had continued to be affectionate with one another, but Delia had explained that (at least for now) she didn’t want it to get any more physical--she had been through so much in the past several months...the job search, finishing her dissertation, the break-up with Amy, her big move, starting her new job, finishing her book, losing her dad. Lili had been very understanding--she hadn’t pressed her. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere,” Lili had said sweetly, hugging her friend at the airport. “I mean, besides London, of course.” They both smiled. “But you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Delia said gratefully, and then kissed her quickly on the lips. “You'd better get going.”

…

As Delia drove off, she felt genuinely sad to leave Lili. But a big part of her was also relieved to be on her own again. In particular, Delia realized that she was looking forward to seeing Patsy, that she had missed her.

The last time she had been alone with Patsy, she was crying into her shoulder. Delia wouldn’t have imagined prior to that night that anything could have felt so comforting to her at such a time, but being held by Patsy had made her feel both like there was an outside to her pain and that she was not alone in it. It had made Delia feel that “home” for her, her sense of belonging in the world, was not defined by a single place or person. And because of this, though they hadn’t communicated hardly at all after they left each other that night, Patsy had never been far from Delia’s thoughts. As an escape from the pain of her loss and her worry for her mam and Edwin, Delia had frequently let herself daydream about Patsy. She knew exactly what she was doing, though she hadn’t spent much time thinking about what it meant. She was using the pleasure she felt recalling Patsy as a way of coping--a drug of sorts to dull the pain. 

What Delia recalled at those times when she felt she most needed relief were little glimpses of Patsy…the way that she reached out to casually touch Delia’s arm for emphasis when she was telling her something important...the way that she always seemed acutely aware of Delia--her location, her mood, her attention--even in busy professional contexts or with lots of others around...the half smile that always appeared just before she teased Delia. And, of course, Delia had thought a lot about how it had felt when Patsy had wrapped her arms around her the night she got the message from her mam. 

It wasn’t really a moment she otherwise wanted to relive, but she thought about how Patsy had instinctively pulled Delia to her, about how Patsy had done this in spite of the fact that they hadn’t yet been quite so affectionate with one another. As she drove home from the airport, Delia thought about how it had felt for Patsy to use nearly every part of her body to make sure Delia felt truly held by her--not just as a gesture, but as a real and genuine act of caring. And she thought about how completely secure she had felt in Patsy’s arms, how Patsy had pressed her cheek to the top of Delia’s head, how that had surprised Delia at the time but how it had also made her feel like there was nowhere else on earth she wanted to be in that moment. And no one else she wanted to be with.

When Delia got home from the airport, she tried to get some work done, but she was having a hard time focussing. She kept looking at her phone to see if Patsy had texted yet as she said she was going to. Delia had said, “maybe this weekend” when Patsy asked if she wanted to meet up to walk Pearl, so she had expected that Patsy would get in touch before the start of the weekend to make plans. But when 5:30 came around and Delia still hadn’t heard from her, she started to wonder if she would. It wasn’t like Patsy to do so, but maybe she had forgotten? Instead of waiting to find out, she sent Patsy a quick text.

>> Still up for that walk with Pearl?

Delia waited. Nothing. For twenty minutes. And then a reply finally came through.

> Don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it.  
> Am held up at the office reading page-proofs.

Delia’s heart fell, but she pressed on--tried to stay upbeat. 

> You got your proofs in! That’s exciting!  
> Maybe a drink later to celebrate?

What Delia didn’t know is that Patsy had decided she wasn’t going to get in touch with her as she had said she would. She was feeling emotionally drained and needed to get through her page-proofs over the weekend. Seeing Delia would be hard, she thought, and she needed to be able to focus. But when Delia texted, Patsy had totally lost her focus--what she really wanted was to see Delia...

> I might be able to swing that. Where? Patsy replied.

> How about the new place near you? I’ve heard the cocktails are delicious.  
> Meet there at 8? Will that give you enough time?

> Sounds good. 

When Delia arrived, Patsy was already there. She was sitting at a hightop table with a fresh cocktail next to her. It looked like a cosmopolitan--a sexy, pink thing in a classic, shapely cocktail glass with a long stem. Fitting, Delia smiled. 

As she walked towards the table, Delia admired the hot, smarty-pants professor thing Patsy had going on. She was still dressed from her day as Dr. Mount--in fact, she appeared still very much to be in full Dr. Mount mode. She was reading over the stack of page-proofs for her new book wearing her sexy, dark-rimmed reading glasses, pen in hand--the cap end resting between her teeth. Her hair was up, as usual, in a sweepy bun that allowed a few long and luscious strands to rest gently against her beautiful, full cheeks. 

“How’s the book?” Delia asked, smiling at her senior colleague as she slid into the tall chair nearest to her. “I hear it’s a page-turner.”

Patsy said nothing at first. She had fully expected to be reserved with Delia when she got there--she was so tired, but Delia had disarmed her simply by brushing her leg lightly, accidentally as she slipped into the chair she now occupied. She reached for her cocktail and studied Delia over the rim of her glasses as she took a sip. “You look very rested for someone who’s had a difficult and busy couple weeks,” Patsy said genuinely.

“I suppose,” Delia pondered. “Or maybe I’m just happy to see you…” she said, flirtatiously. It was the truth, and Delia’s eyes immediately revealed how pleased she was with herself for daring to say it.

Patsy raised her eyebrows, removed her glasses, and gathered up her page-proofs to put them away, “Well, I hope to find out what it’s like to feel rested again once I finish reading these proofs. They’re currently waging war on my sanity, I’m afraid.” 

Delia noticed Patsy had brushed off her flirty comment and so followed her lead and switched gears a bit, “I’ll be in the same position in a few weeks,” Delia comisserated. “The press said my proofs should be ready for review in early December.”

“Oh, that’s exciting,” Patsy acknowledged. “We’ll have to drink to that, too.” And then she waved to the waitress so Delia could order something.

The conversation went on like this through their first couple cocktails--mostly easy, ordinary, and pleasant small talk about work projects, book writing, and editing followed by some discussion of how they were grateful that the MLA was going to be in a warm place this year since they would both have to attend the post-Christmas holiday conference to interview job candidates. Though the topics weren’t particularly scintillating, both women were grateful for the simple pleasure of being in each other’s presence again.

As they spoke, Patsy tried not to think about what she had seen earlier in the week, the kiss between Delia and Lili, but it was hard--having seen the tenderness of the kiss that Delia had initiated had felt so devastating to Patsy and she found herself repeatedly half-wondering where the woman was tonight. 

By the time they were finishing their third drink, Delia was a little tipsy and had started being more flirtatious again. Subtlety had never been her strong suit, so Patsy noticed immediately. She had seen Delia’s eyes lingering on her lips when she spoke, had seen her glance catch on the spot just beneath the thin gold chain Patsy was wearing that sometimes got held up on her shirt where it met the top of her bra. And she had found Delia following the movement of her hands in a way that women sometimes did when the flirtation between them was progressing, when they were starting to imagine what it would feel like to have Patsy touching, inside of them.

All of this made Patsy wonder what it all meant to Delia--the kiss, her time with Patsy. It was possible she hadn’t given Delia enough credit for being capable of throwing caution to the wind and going after what or who she wanted when she wanted it. Maybe she had underestimated Delia’s sexual prowess--had thought of her as much more naive and inexperienced than she actually was. Whatever the case, one thing was crystal clear to Patsy now: Delia was feeling very attracted to her in this moment and she was not hiding it. 

Patsy was conflicted. Part of her didn’t care what else was going on or with whom. Part of her only cared about what was happening right now. That part of Patsy wanted to pay the check, insist that they leave immediately for her place, and explore their desire for each other. Patsy had very little experience with tension such as that which she felt between her and Delia tonight leading anywhere else. 

But another part of Patsy couldn’t stop wondering exactly what the fuck was going on. Where was this other woman whom Delia had so clearly behaved as though she had feelings for? Where had Delia’s feelings for her come from? Where were they now? 

Patsy had a long history of preferring casual, open relationships and she was certainly not against being objectified by the right person. Ordinarily, Delia would absolutely qualify as the right person, but Patsy realized now that she didn’t want to be the one Delia just wanted to fuck. It was a very new feeling for her, but it was becoming more and more clear to her that she wanted to be the one Delia wanted with all of her being as much as Patsy now realized she wanted Delia with all of hers.

“Pats…” Delia said interrupting Patsy’s thoughts about this. And then she paused, looking at her senior colleague’s lips as she reached under the table to place her hand on Patsy’s. When she did this, however, Delia accidentally placed her hand on Patsy’s bare knee which was crossed over her other. This surprised Patsy and caused Delia to completely lose her train of thought--Patsy’s knee...and then her calf...were so smooth, so soft. Delia had to remind herself of her original intent. She fumbled a bit to find Patsy’s hand which was a good 18 inches away, in her lap. 

Patsy felt her cheeks warm at the feel of Delia’s hot hand on her leg. She wondered where Delia was going with this and looked over her shoulder to see who might be seeing them now. Patsy was not at all shy about being a lesbian, but she generally refrained from public displays of affection in town, near campus. She didn’t want anyone who knew them both to get the wrong--or, perhaps, right impression. That kind of gossip served no one.

Patsy opened her hand to Delia’s in her lap and waited for her to say whatever it was she wanted to say. “I…” Delia started again and then paused. “Pats, I…feel like I need to tell you something.” 

Patsy felt something like relief wash over her. Maybe Delia was going to come clean, maybe she was going to tell her about the other woman. She wasn’t sure what would come of that, but at least it would be an opportunity to acknowledge the troublesome elephant in the room. And who knows, maybe talking about it would ultimately bring them closer as it had in past. 

“What is it, Delia? You know you can tell me anything,” she urged. Patsy desperately wanted to clear the air, to understand what was going on. Whatever Delia was trying to say, it was obviously not easy for her.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Delia smiled. She looked back down at Patsy’s lips and paused again. “...because I would never want to do anything to hurt our friendship, but…” Delia continued slowly, “I think I might...have a little crush on you?” She said it as though she weren’t sure (“a little crush on you?”), but of course, that wasn’t the case at all. Delia’s understated choice of words, her intonation--posing it as a question she was casually pondering--had been a sort of nervous inside joke with herself. Like, just a little crush...yeah, right.

But Patsy wasn’t in on the joke--and her concerns were providing a very different frame of reference for the confession. That’s it? Patsy thought to herself. You have a “little crush” on me? She was not flattered--she was disappointed and hurt all over again. She reached for her bag and started gathering her things. 

Delia tried to stop her. She touched Patsy's arm, “Wait, Pats, what are you doing? Don’t go.” 

Patsy seemed to have already made up her mind. She looked down at Delia’s hand on her arm and then back up into Delia’s eyes again and said, “I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing here, Delia. But I have neither the interest in playing games with you nor the energy for it.” It was a little harsh, but it was honest. Patsy really didn’t have the energy for it. The devastation she had felt so acutely earlier in the week had left her feeling completely and utterly drained. All of the verve and appetite she had been feeling prior to that, the abundant energy she had felt the need to smoke, fuck, or run off...was gone. 

Patsy stood in front of Delia, waiting, her eyes were serious. She was hoping Delia might say something else, perhaps acknowledge that she understood that a game was being played here. But Delia said nothing. Instead, she just held Patsy's gaze, trying to sort out what to do next. She was embarrassed and confused. She had been sure she felt the tension building between them, that it wasn’t just she who was feeling it. How could she have read things so wrong? 

As she waited for Delia to say something, Patsy was getting closer and closer to her breaking point. She briefly considered walking out without saying anything else. But now she couldn’t stop thinking about the tenderness of the kiss she had witnessed and trying to reconcile it with Delia’s behavior tonight. The moment was getting the better of her. 

Patsy placed her hand on Delia’s forearm gently as she leaned in, stopping with her mouth just an inch from Delia’s ear. She paused while she struggled with the impulse to say what she was thinking. Delia could feel the heat of Patsy’s cheek next to hers, her breath on her ear, and, in spite of everything, in spite of the train wreck that this evening had become, the nearness of Patsy was only intensifying her desire and making her heart race. She closed her eyes. 

“I saw you,” Patsy whispered tensely in Delia’s ear. “I saw the way you kissed her just a few days ago…” Delia couldn't believe what she was hearing--she could feel the pain in Patsy’s soft voice. Her head turned quickly, she looked at Patsy, wide-eyed.

“So please, Delia…” Patsy continued, their faces just inches apart. “...please don’t insult me and my feelings for you by acting as though you’re just looking for an innocent shag with a friend tonight. You think you might have a ‘little crush’ on me? Well, I wouldn’t fuck you right now if you begged me to.” 

Delia searched Patsy’s eyes trying to determine which part of what she had said to respond to. And though it seemed totally inappropriate given what had just been said, Delia’s instinct was to close the small gap between them and kiss Patsy. In fact, she felt in that moment as though she had never wanted anything more. But...how could she? Fuck, Delia thought to herself. Fuck. What have I done? 

She was suddenly sick to her stomach. She was overwhelmed by the shock of what Patsy had just shared with her, by the obvious intensity of feeling that had prompted it, and by the fierceness of her own inappropriate desire in that moment. And so Delia did the only thing she could to survive the moment without totally losing it: She averted her eyes and turned back towards her drink.

Patsy didn’t know what to make of Delia’s turning away, but she was done. She let go of Delia’s arm and rushed out of the bar into the cold night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [ Outro for Chapter 11: Adele's "Right as Rain"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5DMmOLkLQI)  
> 
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)


	13. Always and Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure what kind of warning to give you about this, but I feel as though I ought to say something, soooo, um...if you thought the last chapter was intense, you might want to double or tripple your preparations for this one. 
> 
> And, uh...P.S. This chapter is definitely rated "M" for sexy times.

_Patsy’s arms surrounded Delia, and Delia’s were wound tightly 'round Patsy’s waist. Their eyes were closed and they were moving as one to Doris Day singing “Dream a Little Dream” (“Say nightie night and kiss me...Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me…”). They were surrounded by several other couples, but neither were thinking of anything but how wonderful it felt to be pressed against the other. They had had the most glorious night of their lives._

__

__

_Delia pulled back and looked up at Patsy who relaxed her arms and laced her fingers together behind Delia’s neck, just as she had when they first entered the dance floor earlier that evening. “I love you, Pats,” Delia said as she looked deep into her girlfriend’s eyes. She could feel the fronts of Patsy’s thighs still moving slowly with hers to the music and the weight of Patsy’s beautiful hands behind her neck. She was trying to notice and savor every bit of this moment so that she could have it with her always._

_Patsy smiled, releasing one of her hands and bringing it just under Delia’s chin. She looked down at Delia’s lips and Delia instinctively lifted to meet the taller woman’s kiss. The kiss was soft and sweet and warm and they stayed like that for several seconds--lips fitted together, breathing each other’s soft breath as they swayed to the music (“...I linger on here, still craving your kiss, I’m longing to linger ‘till dawn, dear…”)._

_As the house lights came up, their kiss faded and they opened their eyes. They stood for a moment, eyes locked, holding each other--neither wanted the night to end._

_“Okay, ladies. Thanks for making this another wonderful night for us all here at the Gateways,” the manager called out. “Please be safe getting home, and we’ll see you next time!”_

_Patsy took Delia’s hand and led her up the stairs. They got their coats and headed into the chilly night, arm in arm. On the ride home, they sat close on the upper deck and watched the stars, leaning together with the top of their heads just touching...trying to extend their night out as a couple as long as possible. They both felt so free and happy and in love. It was the first time either of them had felt all three of these things at once._

_When they got back to Nonnatus and found everyone had already gone up, Delia took Patsy’s hand in both of hers and led her toward the stairs. Patsy stopped at the foot of the stairs as Delia started up. “What is it, Pats?” she whispered. Patsy looked around like she was worried someone might see them. “It’s fine, Pats,” Delia reassured her quietly. “No one is up, and Barbara must be out on a call.” Patsy bit her lip, squeezed her girlfriend’s hand lightly, and followed her up the stairs._

_Delia quietly opened the door to her room and turned to look at Patsy, smiling mischievously. She adjusted her grip on her girlfriend’s hand, threaded her warm fingers through Patsy’s, and tugged gently on her arm. Patsy looked right and left quickly before hurrying into the room behind Delia._

_When they were both inside with the door closed, Delia paused for a moment to look at her beautiful girlfriend, and then she sighed. She was still smiling, had hardly stopped all night. As they stood there in the dark together, anticipating what might happen next, both of their hearts were racing. Delia stepped close to Patsy and placed her hands on her girlfriend’s hips. She held Patsy’s gaze as she hooked a finger just inside the waist of Patsy’s pants and slid it around to the front, lightly pulling Patsy to her._

_Patsy took a short step closer and Delia let her hands slide down slightly so that she was holding Patsy again by her hips, only lower this time. Delia squeezed and her thumbs pressed just near enough to where Patsy’s legs joined with her sensitive area that Patsy’s eyes closed reflexively. She was weak with anticipation._

__

__

_“Delia,” she said, only because she felt like she should--she had been wanting this for as long as she could remember. Her eyes opened and she smiled a little half smile. “Can we? I mean, do you think we ought to?” ___

__

__

__

__

_Delia answered by placing one finger to the front of her own lips and then, reaching for Patsy’s, lightly tracing the swell of her girlfriend’s beautiful, full lips with her thumb. Delia wanted to feel and taste every part of Patsy’s lips with her own, and so, she raised up slightly on her toes, parted Patsy’s lips with her thumb, and kissed her softly and openly. Their relaxed lips brushing against each others’ much more loosely than they had at the Gateways, their tongues found and flirted with each other. Drawing out of the soft kiss, Delia looked up into Patsy’s eyes and then back down at her mouth and kissed her again, more urgently this time. It was delicious and warm, and their desire was building as they sucked and held and tasted each other’s mouths in ways neither had even thought to imagine before._

_Patsy was slowly finding her own courage in the moment. She was loving this side of Delia, her quiet passion--it made her ache all over. Patsy pulled Delia to her, their hips fit tightly together, and then she bent her knee slightly and pushed it gently between Delia’s thighs. Delia’s breath caught when Patsy did this. She instinctively parted her legs and moaned into Patsy’s mouth. “Pats,” she whispered breathlessly._

_Feeling Delia’s desire intensifying made Patsy’s own more fierce, and she reached down the sides of Delia’s legs and pulled up with both hands at the material of the dress, lifting it above Delia’s hips and repositioning her leg more deeply between Delia’s. Patsy’s left hand pressed into Delia’s exposed lower back as her right reached around to unzip the back of Delia’s dress. Patsy released Delia and took a short step back to help her girlfriend ease her arms out of the dress. She then slid the dress slowly over the rest of Delia’s beautiful curves until it pooled at her feet. Patsy took Delia’s hand in hers as Delia stepped out of the dress. She kissed Delia’s knuckles with wet, open lips and then gazed at her beautiful full body._

_Admiring the soft strength of Delia’s broad shoulders as she moved Delia's long dark hair resting on them with a light sweep of her fingers, Patsy kissed her way from Delia’s neck at her hairline towards her bare shoulder. She pulled the straps of Delia’s bra off of both shoulders, exposing the tops of Delia’s perfect breasts and glimpsing her hardening nipples, and pressed another soft kiss on Delia’s shoulder as she ran two fingers lightly down Delia’s spine, tracing the curve in her lower back._

_Delia had begun to shake slightly from the newness of all of these touches and the anticipation of the moment. Feeling this, Patsy pulled back to make sure she was okay. And then, recognizing it as an effect of her gentle exploration, she found Delia’s response to her touch having a similar effect on her own desire. Adjusting to the deepening intensity of the moment, Patsy boldly slipped her fingers into the back of Delia’s underwear. Delia shuttered as Patsy cupped her bottom, and Patsy’s pulse began to quicken._

_“Pats,” Delia said, her hand reaching out to Patsy’s waist to steady herself. She wanted more and Patsy wanted nothing else in this moment than to give her more. And so, with greater tension and fierceness than her other movements to this point, Patsy slipped her arm around Delia’s waist, lifted her slightly onto her toes, and kissed her girlfriend deeply and longingly on the lips._

_This was the first time either of them had been this intimate with another. Though Patsy had imagined something vaguely like this with Delia many times before, and Delia with Patsy, neither had had any idea what it would feel like to be totally consumed by their desire for the other when it finally happened. Neither could have imagined the way that their slightest touch--their curiosity and exploration--could inspire such wonderful responses from the other, and how those responses would intensify the moment, leading to new touches and physiological responses that seemed as though they would never cease multiplying and intensifying._

_Fully attuned to all of this as it unfolded, Patsy was acting purely instinctively, without any thought or design or concern for anything beyond this moment. She couldn’t believe how wonderful Delia’s bare skin felt. She pulled back and looked into Delia’s eyes as if to make sure this was all real, that this beautiful human she had all to herself was real, that it was indeed happening with the same Delia whom she had adored for so long._

_Delia smiled at the intensity of her girlfriend’s developing desire, and more than anything now, she desperately wanted Patsy’s skin against her own. Delia brought both her hands up between them and hurriedly began unbuttoning Patsy’s top. As she got about two-thirds of the way through the buttons, she suddenly became impatient and pulled Patsy’s shirt out from inside the waist of her pants. Next, Delia undid the belt, buttons, and zipper from the top of Patsy's pants and tugged them free of her hips. Patsy was a bit startled by the move and then noticed how exhilarating the feeling of being so exposed to and vulnerable with Delia was. She finished what Delia had started, fully removing her pants and hose._

_When Patsy was standing straight again, Delia thrust both hands up the front of Patsy's blouse. First, enjoying the softness of Patsy's stomach and waist and then exploring further above her waist. Patsy’s breasts felt full to Delia’s touch, and Delia could feel her girlfriend’s nipples hardening under her thick, silky bra. Hands spread wide, Delia tucked her thumbs under the bottom front of Patsy’s bra and then ran them underneath in either direction around to Patsy’s back, unfastening the clasp of her bra while Patsy finished unbuttoning her blouse. Once free of her shirt, Patsy tossed it aside and shrugged out of her bra. She was now fully naked except for the thin layer of silk knickers on her bottom half. And Delia was beside herself with desire. She couldn’t believe her eyes, which were doing everything they could to take in the form of Patsy’s perfect body in the darkened bedroom._

_Patsy removed Delia’s bra from around her, pausing for a moment to enjoy the vision her girlfriend’s bare chest. And then they stepped to each other--pressing tightly together, their touch unhindered by fabric, and kissing deeply. As their tops embraced for the first time with nothing between them, both thought that they could never have imagined how wonderful the simple act of hugging each other like this would feel. It’s was pure and unadulterated bliss, and both were becoming increasingly swollen and wet, aching for each other._

_“I want to touch you,” Pasty breathed into Delia’s neck._

_“Oh, Pats,” Delia gasped as Patsy reached down between her legs. “Pats...” Delia moaned softly and then bit into Patsy's shoulder._

_As Patsy’s fingers explored Delia’s wet warmth, Delia felt as though her legs might give out. She wrapped her arms tightly around Patsy for support and Patsy pressed against her, a firm hand supporting Delia’s back as she lowered them both slowly to the bed._

…

_When Delia woke, she had an odd, wonderful feeling all over--it was almost like being reborn. She had never before awoken feeling this way. Assuming at first that she must have just had the most wonderful dream and wanting to return to it, she briefly tried to recall the details, and then, as her awareness grew, Delia realized that she felt someone next to her. She glanced to her left and found Patsy’s soft long hair splayed across her pillow--her head turned towards the door, her beautiful pale shoulder exposed. The events that had prompted Delia feeling as she did, she quickly realized, hadn’t been a dream at all--she and Patsy had finally…_

_Delia felt a glorious rush of excitement and embarrassment as all they had done and said to each other in the late hours after returning from the Gateways flashed before her. And then she looked quickly at the clock on her bed stand. Shit._

_Delia turned back towards Patsy, threaded her arm under hers and wrapped it tightly around Patsy’s warm, naked waist. “Pats,” she said, cuddling into her girlfriend’s back and kissing her soft neck, “Pats.”_

_Patsy’s skin smelled sweet, like Eucalyptus. Her scent was like a drug Delia couldn’t get enough of. She breathed in and felt a familiar ache as she did so. And then a shiver pulsed through her. She bent her knee up, wedging it gently between Patsy’s legs from behind._

_“Pats,” she said again, softly, reluctantly--she absolutely hated herself for disturbing the moment._

_“Mmmm?” Patsy finally stirred. She looked over her shoulder at Delia, smiled, and then rolled towards Delia and onto her back. As she did so, she lifted her arm over Delia’s head and pulled Delia’s shoulders to her, bringing her girlfriend’s head to her chest. She hugged Delia tightly and kissed the top of her head._

_Delia kissed Patsy’s chest and then lifted up onto her elbow and looked somewhat sheepishly into her girlfriend’s eyes. They both took a second to recognize that they were naked--looking down at themselves and each other, feeling exposed and vulnerable as they did so, which both found made them an odd mixture of aroused and shy._

_“Hi,” Patsy said, smiling, her eyes searching Delia’s as she recalled all that had happened between them during and after Gateways._

_“Hi,” Delia smiled. She kissed Patsy, tasting both of them on her lips as she did. She looked down again at Patsy’s naked form admiringly and took in the raw beauty of this most amazing and gorgeous person she had the very good fortune to be lying next to--and slightly on top of. Her right leg was now bent up across Patsy’s waist._

_“You’re so beautiful, Pats,” she said as she lightly traced a finger from the warm spot just in front of Patsy’s ear, down the side of her neck, across one part of her collarbone, and then descending slowly between her breasts and around one nipple. Delia leaned in and covered the nipple with her soft, warm lips and flat tongue, sucking gently before continuing to trace over Patsy’s pristinely pale stomach with her finger, lifting her leg so that she could trace across Patsy’s belly button, down the inside of the front of her hip bone, and finally, deeply between her legs._

_As she reached the soft folds of Patsy’s sensitive warmth, Delia’s stomach tensed when she discovered that Patsy was still wet, or was wet again--she wasn’t sure. She looked back up at Patsy, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, and found her girlfriend’s open mouth again with her own. “Oh, Pats, you feel so good,” she whispered softly into Patsy’s lips. And then she felt Patsy’s muscles contract around her finger._

_Delia sighed deeply. This was a heaven on earth that she had had no idea existed just the day before. And now, her already very deep feelings for Patsy were bundled in the ecstasy of what they had just shared. Neither of them would ever be the same._

_Delia groaned in frustration and collapsed onto her shoulder. She pulled her hand out of Patsy’s warmth and pressed her palm tenderly against the sensitive area as she said, “I’m sorry.” And then, “Pats, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but don’t you think you ought to get back to your room before Trixie wakes up for her early shift and finds you haven’t slept in your bed at all?”_

_Patsy’s right arm fell away from Delia’s back where her short nails had been lightly pressing into her girlfriend’s skin. “Delia, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she protested. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one who worries about things like that? You can’t expect me to leave now...”_

_“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” Delia was half lying on top of her girlfriend now. She reached for Patsy’s arms one at a time, pulling each around her. When they didn’t respond immediately, she slid her hands up under Patsy’s shoulders, her breasts resting on Patsy’s as she did so, and tried to nudge her girlfriend’s arms into squeezing her._

_Patsy sighed, hugged her girlfriend tightly, rocked her back and forth teasingly, and then kissed the top of her head. “I love you, Delia,” she said, “even if it turns out that you are an awful tease of the worst possible kind.”_

_“I love you, Pats,” Delia echoed before kissing her girlfriend again with a smile. Delia lingered. Patsy’s scent was drawing her back in, and she soon found herself licking and exploring her girlfriend’s lips again._

_As their kiss developed, Patsy’s hand slid down Delia’s back and gripped around her waist pulling her tight. Her other hand cupped the back of one of Delia’s in hers, leaning Delia away slightly and off of her, as Patsy slowly guided their hands back down between her legs. Leaving Delia’s hand in place where she wanted it, she reached with her own for Delia’s soft warmth._

_Both women began stroking each other, firmly and tenderly as their kisses loosened and their breath deepened. Delia squirmed with pleasure as her fingers dipped back into Patsy’s wet warmth at the same time that Patsy’s dipped into her own. They both moaned softly into each other’s mouths, and Patsy lifted her hips to Delia’s touch._

_“Oh, Pats...” Delia protested lightly into her girlfriend’s lips as they kissed, still exploring with her hand. “Pats…you’re so bad,” Delia half whispered as she moved away from Patsy’s mouth and kissed her way over her girlfriend’s soft neck and down to her breasts. Patsy wiggled her hips around Delia’s hand trying to get Delia to focus her efforts a bit more._

_Delia kissed Patsy again, deeply, on the lips, and then removed her hand, this time shifting it around to Patsy’s pert bottom and squeezing as hard as she could. “Pats,” she sighed deeply. “The only thing I want more than you right now...” she paused--feeling Patsy’s hand still just inside of her and tracing Patsy’s open lips with her eyes. She felt an almost overwhelming ache between her legs and then she kissed Patsy again._

_“The only thing I want more than you right now,” she started once more, trying to strengthen her resolve, “is to be able to have more of you again in the future.” She groaned as she briefly considered how absolutely insane she must be to be saying what she was. “Seriously, this is…” she shook her head as if to say ‘there are no words,’ “...lovely, really it is, and trust me, I never want it to end. But…” she looked into Patsy’s eyes, “I also don’t want us to be greedy and ruin things for ourselves.”_

_Delia rolled off of Patsy’s hand and onto her back so that they were now shoulder to shoulder, their chests fully exposed, the covers down just below their waists. Patsy sighed deeply, turned her head towards Delia, and said, “As much as I want to hate you right now for showing me such exquisite pleasure and then insisting that we stop, I suppose I have to admit that you’re right.”_

_Patsy rolled towards Delia, her breasts resting on Delia’s arm. She looked down at her beautiful, hot, adorable, delicious angel of a girlfriend, pushed an errant strand of hair off of one of Delia’s rosy cheeks, and smiled at her adoringly. She was happier in this moment--even with the excruciating pain she felt at the prospect of having to leave Delia in her bed now--than she ever imagined would be possible for her._

_“Delia,” she said, turning Delia’s face to hers gently with her hand, “I hope you won’t tire of hearing it,” she said softly, “but I love you.” Their eyes held each other for a long moment and then Patsy kissed Delia, her full lips enveloping her girlfriend’s. “I love you,” she said again...and then she repeated it over and over as she playfully made her way kissing every part of Delia that was exposed--her shoulders, her neck, each of her warm eyes, her cheeks, breasts, stomach, elbows and hands._

_“Always and forever,” Patsy added with one final, enveloping kiss to Delia’s lips. And then she rolled away, lifted the covers fully off of her, and started to gather her clothes to dress for the short walk down the hall._

_Delia lay on her side, her head sunk deep into her pillow, one arm across the bed as if reaching for her girlfriend as she watched Patsy dress. Delia’s expression was full of love and just the faintest undercurrent of frustration and sadness. How could she have just sent this beautiful woman who she loved more than anything out of her bed? How would she ever get enough of her? How was one lifetime possibly going to be enough for Delia to feel as though she had loved all of her sufficiently?_

_Patsy reached for Delia’s hand nearest her, leaned down, and kissed its palm. She stood up and sighed, still holding Delia's hand. “Try to rest a little before your shift,” she said, before letting go and and moving to leave._

_Patsy paused when she got to the door, her hand resting on the knob, and looked back at Delia. She smiled warmly and blew her a kiss. “Sweet dreams, my love.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 13: The Mamas and the Papas’ version of “Dream a Little Dream” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJwjLYRPxJY)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> [Bonus track: Doris Day's original "Dream a Little Dream"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7j8wa9sWOE)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> [Full mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	14. "Like Oil on My Hands"

When Delia woke, she felt as though she’d been up all night having sex. She felt warm and happy and sexy and...a bit tired, actually. She smiled, satisfied, and then she felt Pearl’s hot breath on her leg and realized that, sadly, she had not been up having sex all night; rather, she’d been asleep all night dreaming about having sex. Delia sighed--the first of many for the day. 

She couldn’t recall the details, but she had the distinct sense that her dream had starred, predictably (she rolled her eyes at herself), the one and only, Dr. Mount--the woman she had been thinking about all weekend since their disastrous night out Friday, the woman who had literally told her that she wouldn’t fuck her if she begged for it. 

It still made Delia wince to recall the words. Though she had been rejected before, no one had ever quite spelled it out so clearly for her. And yet, in spite of the fact that she had found Friday night’s rejection and its terms momentarily crushing, her main takeaway--the thing she had spent most of her time thinking about since that night--was that Patsy Mount had been so upset . . . because she cared. About her. So much so, apparently, that she had been angered by Delia saying she might have a “little crush” on her three days after having kissed someone else. This blew Delia’s mind. 

She knew very well that Patsy Mount was not innocent when it came to romance. Delia had gathered that Patsy had friends-with-benefits scattered around the globe from all of the suggestive winks and references in response to her repeated attempts to discern Patsy’s current and past relationships. She reckoned from the little smiles and the flip way Patsy usually framed what little she said about the matter that she could--and did--have sex with women on a whim--usually her whim--without much thought for what it meant outside of the encounter. 

And though it was so far from her own experience, Delia actually found Patsy’s breezy, casual, somewhat smug disposition towards her own desirability and opportunistic choices of sexual partners to be pretty hot. The idea that Patsy had that kind of desire and appetite, that she could find pleasure with people she might (perhaps) like but didn’t necessarily want to spend much time with otherwise was, to Delia’s mind, incredibly sexy. And as anyone who had ever seen Patsy around other human beings knew, she had her pick of virtually everyone she met. It was an incredible thing to witness. Because of this, Delia almost couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that this amazing, smart, beautiful, sexy, and sexually adventurous woman might have fallen for her, might actually care what she was doing and with whom. 

Delia moaned dramatically, rolled over onto her stomach with her face smashed into her soft pillow and tried to will herself back into her dream. She didn’t want to go to work and act like a responsible adult today. She wanted to do whatever it took to get back into the dream that had made her wake up with that distinctive, delicious, deep ache between her legs. As a part of her momentary denial that she was almost certainly going to have to shortly re-enter her responsible, very adult life as a professor soon, Delia allowed herself to entertain the ridiculous fantasy that it might be a thing to call in “sexy” instead of “sick” to work so that she could stay home for the day and spend some quality time more fully developing her fantasy life. 

“Yes, Monica, hello. It’s Dr. Busby,” she imagined saying, “Can you cancel my classes and let the others know I won’t make it to the meeting today? Yes, that’s right. Please send along my apologies and let everyone know that I can’t be there....because I’ve woken up sexy and will need to spend the day in bed.” 

Delia smiled into her pillow, amused by the absurdity of her own humor. “Mental health” days were basically a thing now in the States, so why not this? Isn’t that more or less what this would be about? Of course, ideally, one wouldn’t be alone when one called in sexy, but Delia decided that, at this point, since she had basically ruined things with real Pats, some quality time with the version of her that her nighttime imagination had conjured wouldn’t be the worst way to spend a day. 

Sadly, the un-sexiness of being awake and aware had already begun to set in, however, and the details of her dream had already begun to drift tantalizingly just out of reach. All that was left were snippets of disconnected images: smooth skin, hard nipples, squeezing Patsy’s perfect bum, those lips, and...oh god, the wetness. 

“Uggggh,” Delia moaned into her pillow loudly, prompting Pearl to jump up and try to investigate the sound by rooting around Delia’s face playfully with her wet, snooffeling muzzle. 

“Pearl!” Delia protested. “No, girl. Go away!” But it was no use--Pearl was right. She was going to have to face the day sooner or later and the fact that she had accidentally fucked herself, before she and Patsy ever had the chance to do so, by kissing the person she’d spent most of her adult years pining for. She never imagined, in all those years, that when it came to it, she would think of kissing Lili that way, and yet...here she was.

Suddenly, it occurred to Delia as she lay there petting Pearl that the light filtering through her bedroom curtains was awfully bright. Her alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so she had assumed she was good on time. She reached for her phone to check, just in case. 

Oh, shit...she’d forgotten to set her alarm. Fuuhck, and now she was going to be late for the search committee meeting. She had screwed herself with Patsy Friday night, and now she was screwing herself with Dr. Mount this morning. So much screwing, so little fun, she lamented as she jumped out of bed and dashed into the bathroom for a quick shower.

…

When Delia got to campus, it was two minutes after her search committee meeting was meant to start. As she approached the meeting room, she found that the door was already closed and she could hear that Patsy had already started the meeting. Fuck, she said to herself under her breath, fuck. Figuring it would only get worse the longer she waited, she took a deep breath and opened the door. The room immediately quieted and all six of her colleagues already present turned to look at her.

“Sorry...sorry,” Delia said softly as she quickly wound her way behind chairs and over the bags that people had thrown on the floor behind where they sat. Finally, she found a seat...at the other end of the table, as far from Patsy as possible. She did her best to quietly lower her bag to the floor and slip a pen out of the outside pocket. When she was finally settled, she looked up and found Patsy...Dr. Mount looking at her blankly, waiting. Delia mouthed “Sorry.” 

And with no change to her expression, Dr. Mount continued where she had left off… “Right, so, as I was saying, we have a lot to get through this morning.” She passed around half the stack of papers in her hands to each side of the table. “First thing we must get done is approval of the language in the job ad so that I can get that out today. And then we need to talk about a strategy for getting through the applications quickly as they come in...”

Delia’s cheeks reddened and she fixed her eyes on the table just in front of her. She spent the rest of the meeting like this--studiously trying to avoid eye contact with her senior colleague and also drifting away from the conversation, preoccupied with how she was going to get back on track and not let what had happened between her and Patsy consume her time and attention to the detriment of everything else, as it apparently had already begun to do. 

There were only a couple weeks left in the term now and she had quite a lot to get done: In about a week, she was going to have a ton of final papers to mark and was going to need to spend a good bit of time pouring over job applicant files so they could narrow the field from the hundred of applicants they were likely to get over the course of just a couple weeks to the 10-12 they would have time to interview face-to-face at the MLA conference after the Christmas holiday. And...she had her book proofs coming in soon. And...there was her trip back home that she had scheduled before her dad died. 

Delia sighed. She had worked too hard for too long to let things go now just because her personal life was a bit unsteady. She really ought to focus on making sure she took care of her stuff and made it through the next six weeks without totally falling apart. 

…

After the meeting ended, by the time Delia looked up from gathering her things, Patsy was gone. Delia considered the options quickly and decided that she wanted to clear the air with Patsy as soon as possible so that she could get on with the rest of what she had before her. And so, impulsively, Delia darted after her.

As Delia emerged from the meeting room, she found Patsy headed towards her office just down the hall, and by the time Delia got close, Patsy had already entered her office and had pushed the door closed behind her. Delia stopped it from closing all the way and slipped inside.

“Pats…” Delia said quickly, softly. 

Patsy whipped her head around, startled that someone else was there. Delia smiled self-consciously, apologetically and then turned around and closed the door behind her.

“Pats, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry to barge in like this. I just felt like I needed to say something before anymore time went by.”

“Delia, please,” Patsy interrupted. “I’ve been thinking and…”

“Sorry, Pats. I have to say this before I lose my nerve, so please bare with me.” She looked away from Patsy to gather herself and spotted two stacks of page-proofs on Patsy’s desk--one face down and the other face up. An uncapped red pen sat just to the left. She must not have finished getting through them over the weekend, Delia thought to herself. This made Delia even more resolved to say what she was thinking. 

“Pats,” Delia pushed on, “when I said I had a crush on you Friday...I was, well, I was a little tipsy and…”

“Delia, you don’t have to explain. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was feeling a little out of sorts…”

“Pats,” Delia said walking towards her. She was insistent that Patsy let her finish. She wasn’t going to let her derail her from her purpose this time.

Patsy’s pulse quickened and she nervously took a short step back and away, bumping into her desk and momentarily losing her balance. To try to minimize the extent to which this might have made her appear flustered, Patsy pretended it was intentional, reached back with her hand to steady herself, and then shifted up a bit to half sit/lean on the edge of her desk--one long leg straight down, the other just a few inches off the floor...as if that had been her design all along. 

The position she assumed, however, had the unintended effect of shifting her skirt up a couple inches more fully exposing the bare knee Delia had accidentally put her hand on Friday night. Delia’s eyes fell to Patsy’s leg and she swallowed deeply, fully distracted from whatever it is she had been so determined to say. Patsy noticed this and was briefly amused, until she recalled that the context for their current encounter was hardly amusing. She kept a straight face.

Delia gathered herself and pressed on, taking another step towards Patsy and reaching for her hand. With Patsy’s hand in hers, Delia paused for a moment...looking down at their hands together, turning Patsy’s hand over in hers mindlessly, relishing the feeling of the softness and warmth and weight of it in hers, and wondering why her plan for their interaction hadn’t simply begun and ended with this--just holding Patsy’s hand. Delia loved Patsy’s hands. She studied her beautiful, long fingers, noticed that her short, manicured nails were now painted a deep indigo blue, and then she mindlessly fidgeted with one of Patsy’s rings with her thumb. 

Patsy, meanwhile, had completely lost track of what was going on. Last she had seen Delia alone, she had spoken sharply to her and then she had spent the better part of the weekend chastising herself for having done so. Why couldn’t she have just stayed in her comfort zone and taken Delia home with her and fucked her like she had wanted to, like Delia had obviously wanted to? If she had, the weekend would not only have been decidedly more pleasurable, she likely would have also managed to be much more productive. Instead, her proofs had ended up being virtually untouched after Friday night. Patsy had tried all weekend to contrive it, but she just couldn’t get herself to focus on them. And now…?

Patsy was so lost. Why was Delia there, in her office, standing before her holding her hand as she was? She hadn’t said much yet and hadn’t let Patsy say much, so Patsy had no clue what direction things were going to take. Feeling like she hadn’t much control over what happened at this point, which was not at all a familiar or comfortable position for her, Patsy tried to be patient. As she waited for Delia to finish what she had come to say, Patsy watched as Delia studied their hands and played somewhat sweetly but mindlessly with her fingers. And as she did this, she felt a familiar longing welling up in her and was concerned she might not be able to stop herself from responding to Delia’s touch if this went on much longer. 

And then, tracing the full length of Patsy’s ring finger with her thumb before speaking again, Delia pressed on… 

“Pats,” Delia started again. “The thing is that...what I feel for you…” Patsy’s squeezed Delia’s hand reflexively. “The thing is, I have much more than a crush on you.” Patsy’s heart started racing--she hadn’t expected this. 

“I think I said it as I did Friday night because...I didn’t know how you felt. I mean, I definitely felt as though there was some tension between us that night that might reasonably have been considered of the romantic sort or I likely wouldn’t have said anything at all...but honestly, Pats, I had no clue what I was stepping into.” She paused.

Patsy bristled at that.... “Stepping into”? What, so my feelings are like a steaming pile of shit now? Patsy thought to herself.

Delia shook her head. “What I mean is,” she continued, “I had no idea that you had seen Lili and I kiss. Of course you would have been wondering what the hell was going on. You and I have been hanging out for months and I’ve mentioned no one and, suddenly, I’m in the woods kissing some woman… I get that that would be odd and confusing and...” 

Delia looked back down at their hands, she squeezed Patsy’s beautiful, soft hand lightly and then ran the whole length of her thumb over all of Patsy’s fingers at once as she chose her words...she was starting to feel a bit shy about what came next.

“So, Lili is an old friend from Wales. She left to go back to London Friday afternoon, just before I texted you. And...I’ve known her for ages--since we were kids. And...she came back with me to the States for the week. And...there’s not really anything romantic going on between us, exactly, but...we did kiss--I did kiss her, as you saw, and...things are a bit up in the air with her now.” 

“In fact,” Delia continued, “She’s recently told me that she has feelings for me. And, you see, I’ve had feelings for her for so long that it’s been an inside joke between us and our friends for years. Only now I’m not sure how I feel--about Lili--and so…you’re right to feel I should be taking greater care with my affections right now. And...well, anyway, I just want you to know that, roles reversed, if I had seen you kissing someone like that and then a few days later found you flirting with me as I was with you, I would probably have been a bit upset as well.” Delia sighed deeply. There, she had done it--had said what she needed to say...well, at least part of it.

Patsy’s heart was in her stomach. On the one hand, she was so glad to be hearing more about the context for what she had witnessed. And she was so grateful that Delia was being so open with her. But on the other, it sounded like Delia had much more history with the woman than Patsy had imagined. And then there was Monique...that was barely just over a week ago. And then there were her plans for the holiday with… Patsy considered what a hypocrite she was turning out to be, how hard and complicated being honest and open with her feelings was turning out to be. And then she considered that she was still kind of lost--that she still wasn’t quite sure where Delia was going with all of this.

“The thing is, Pats….” Delia looked back up at her. “...I’ve been through so much in the past several months--things that have been pretty hard for me...and not just my dad dying...the break-up, new job, the move--all of it...and though the time we’ve spent getting closer this fall has definitely been one of the bright spots...so much else...has left me feeling a bit emotionally wrung out, I think.” Delia took a deep breath. “And so, I think...the responsible thing for me to do now might be to take some time.” 

Patsy nodded weakly while holding eye contact with Delia. Her eyes were starting to swell a bit, and she feared a tear might suddenly escape and roll down her cheek. Delia could see the pain in Patsy’s eyes as she spoke, though it struck her as looking different from that which she had seen in her Friday night. This pain looked more like the pain of sadness or...love? 

Delia squeezed Patsy’s hand as if to reassure, though she wasn’t really sure what of. And then she continued...

“I think I ought to just focus on the stuff I need to get done in the next several weeks--you know, finish out the work of the term, get the book proofed and off to press, do all of the search committee work. And the Christmas holiday is coming up, so I’ll be heading back to Wales, as I had planned before…” Delia felt sure of what she was saying and yet, as she was saying it, she started to feel something else. “Anyway,” she continued, “it seems like the right thing to do is to just take some time to, you know, do what needs to be done and also give my feelings some time to sort themselves out a bit.” 

Delia squeezed Patsy’s hand again and looked the taller woman in the eyes. “Pats, I care deeply for you, and the last thing I want to do is hurt you or our feelings for each other by being careless.” Delia sighed one final time--there, she’d said it.

“Delia,” Patsy slid slowly off the edge of her desk and stood tall, just inches in front of her. Patsy deftly shifted the position of their hands so that she was now holding Delia's in hers. “You don’t have to explain. Of course…” she tilted her head, trying to hold Delia’s look. 

“You should absolutely take the time to do what you need to do. You *have* been through so much. And hearing you now, I am reminded of that. I’m so sorry I was only thinking of myself and my own hurt feelings Friday. You had just returned from what must have been such a difficult time at home, and... It’s fine, really. I want you to take all the time that you need to get things done and to give yourself the space to sort out your feelings. Lili is a lucky woman to have held your affection for so long,” Patsy smiled. It was Delia now who seemed to be on the verge of tears. 

“And…” Patsy pressed on, “I do care for you, deeply--as my little upset Friday likely made clear,” she half-smiled sheepishly. “And I don’t see that changing anytime soon, so...do what you need to do. Really. We’re going to be fine, either way.” 

They stood for a moment and held each other’s gaze. Patsy lightly traced the tops of Delia’s soft fingers with her thumb. And though it ran counter to all that had just been said between them, both were feeling like they wanted to kiss the other.

“Right,” Patsy said suddenly, putting a hard stop at the end of their conversation. 

“And now, I’m awfully sorry,” she said, shifting quickly into Dr. Mount mode, letting go of Delia’s hand, and walking around to the other side of her desk, “...but I’m afraid I have to run to my next meeting with Dean Mazey.” She reached for her bag and then paused, flashing Delia another sympathetic half smile. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?”

“I will,” Delia said weakly, a bit thrown by the suddenness of the end of their conversation but fully understanding that what had just happened in an instant before her eyes was that Patsy had retreated, and Dr. Mount was now in control. Their intimate talk was over. She turned to walk out. 

As Patsy watched Delia go, she felt a deep sadness in her stomach. She had never been in love before, and she wondered now if this is what it felt like...feeling exhilarated by the mere presence of a particular person no matter what the context, feeling as though being away from them for too long causes symptoms akin to drugs withdrawal, and yet also feeling as though you want them to do what they need to be happy, even if that means leaving you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 14: Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Like a Star” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvH9Ccqk5qc)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	15. “We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --”

As Delia settled into her seat for her flight home, she felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. It had been tough, but she had managed to get all of her grading done, review the page proofs for her book, read through all the application materials for their job candidates, and sit through several tense search committee meetings during which heated debate had revealed some deep conflict among the preferences of committee members. It had been really hard keeping her distance from Patsy at first, but they had both been so busy and Patsy had been away for another speaking engagement for part of it anyway. So they had both, miraculously, managed to focus on the work before them. 

Delia had found Dr. Mount’s way of handling the difficult discussions of the search committee really compelling. Dr. McAdam, the former department chair whom Dr. Mount had replaced just before the Fall term began, had been consistently ranking male candidates above equally or more qualified female candidates. His reasoning turned on the facts that, even though they might have fewer or less impressive publications, the men he wanted to interview had established, often male senior scholars writing strong letters of recommendation for them and their dissertations had treated canonical texts and issues more fully. Delia and a couple other committee members had strongly argued for keeping some of the more progressive, also highly qualified candidates in the mix for their MLA interviews--candidates whose scholarship was more innovative and risky and pushed the field in new directions. This had generated some pretty heated and tense debates that had barely remained collegial. Dr. McAdams had tried to hold court and explain to the others why they were wrong. Delia still didn’t know about the sexual harassment investigation that had led to Dr. McAdam’s resignation as department chair, but she found his arguments and way of arguing unconvincing, pompous, and self-important. 

As head of the search committee, Dr. Mount had chosen to maintain a more measured position than she might have otherwise and so had served primarily as a facilitator of discussion and moderator of debate. Delia had been a little frustrated by this at first, but then she observed how Dr. Mount had used this position to make certain that Delia and others were able to have their voices heard. She firmly and deftly had kept Dr. McAdam in check when he tried to talk over others as they made their points or when his inflexibility threatened to push them into unresolvable stalemates. In the end, only one of those he argued for were voted through to the MLA interviews.

But Delia’s thoughts now, as she flew hundreds of miles per hour away from these conversations, were not about this; they were primarily about how she was going to manage the transition from a focus on crossing off work tasks on her list of things to do to sorting out her emotions, something she had let herself compartmentalize while she finished up the term. As she thought through all that that included, she briefly longed for the much easier work of finishing a book, reading hundreds of pages of student essays about the same eight novels, and reviewing thousands of pages of job applicant materials. 

She supposed she would play the Lili situation by ear and see how she felt once they were together again--even though, after the conversation she had had with Patsy about taking some time to sort it all out, she had, ironically, felt as though she knew exactly what and who she wanted. Still, she thought the serious feelings involved ought not be too hastily processed. This had meant, however, that she was going to have to manage the additional labor of trying not to think about the fact that Patsy would soon be in sitting on a beach half-naked, sipping daiquiris by the sea with Monique or one of the others. When Patsy had texted her about it, Delia had decided she didn’t want to know the details and so hadn’t asked. 

> **Just so you know...**

Patsy texted Delia out of the blue the morning before she left…

> **I had a trip planned with a friend before we talked and…**  
> **I’ve decided to follow through with it.**

> I appreciate the heads up, but I’m glad you’re going, Pats.  
> Enjoy yourself. You deserve it. :)

Delia had, of course, been a bit heartbroken to get the text, but she had also appreciated Patsy being up front about it. She had known for a while that Patsy tended to celebrate an early Christmas with her dad at his nursing home and then spend the rest of the holiday “with a friend” on some amazing beach somewhere. It was something she did for fun, but also (Delia had assumed) to avoid the sadness the holidays can bring when you don’t have a family in your home or a family home to return to. 

Even though Delia couldn’t think about it without feeling a little sick with jealousy, more than that, she didn’t want to think of Patsy all alone at home for the holiday. She had, after all, been the one to ask Patsy for the time to sort things out. And she had made clear to Patsy that she wasn’t sure which way her feelings might fall with Lili. So, as much as she wished she could be the “friend” who accompanied Patsy on her trip, the reality was that she couldn’t be that person, and she genuinely wanted Patsy to find happiness where she could.

…

The flight home was mostly uneventful, except for one thing: She had dreamt about Patsy again. This was something that had become a fairly regular occurrence for her. And Delia had frequently lamented the fact that even her sleepy, subconscious was apparently incapable of subtlety. She mostly enjoyed the dreams--they had been a welcome relief from the otherwise “all business, all the time” of her life over the last few weeks. In fact, she had, on occasion, even summoned the dreams by telling herself a story just before bed that she had made up about having been close to Patsy in another time and place.

In her little story, she and Patsy had shared an intense but taboo love affair with many obstacles, but they had found a way to be together anyways. It was kind of silly, she realized--and perhaps it should have tipped her off about the certainty of what her heart wanted--but it hadn’t. She had just allowed herself to enjoy the fantasy and had resisted any analysis of what it meant. It made her feel like she was going home in some way she didn’t entirely understand, and it had given her hope that had sustained her through all of the work she had had to focus on at the end of term--hope that she needn’t worry about making the right decision when the time came, because true love was unstoppable. 

The dream Delia had on her flight back to Wales for the Christmas holiday was, however, a bit different from the others. In fact, though not all of the other dreams she had had about Patsy were as sexy and action-packed as she might have liked, the one on her flight home was decidedly, well, dull. Literally, nothing had happened in it. There was no compelling conversation, no major event, no insight, no weird context, no painful sexual tension, no emotional conflict. Instead, she had just dreamt that she was sitting at a sun-bleached wood table on which were perched a two delicate, filled tea cups in their saucers. Sun streamed through an open window. Just outside, there was a vast blue sky. And a warm breeze blew translucent linen curtains across her field of vision. Patsy was there, of course, but she was just...there, across the table, smiling. Nothing was said or done. It was just...tea. At a table. And yet, it was the most beautiful dream she had ever had, and it had made her very happy. 

By the time Delia landed, her feelings about the dream, about Patsy, had grown so loud and persuasive that she found it impossible to keep herself from texting as soon as she had service, before she even got off the plane. It was late in Cardiff, but it would only be about 6pm EST for Patsy...

> Pats… 

Delia still wasn’t 100% sure she knew what she wanted to say. 

> **Deels… :)**

Delia smiled to herself as she deplaned. 

> Pats, it feels a little unfair of me to say, but I can’t help it...  
> I miss you.

It was scary to just throw that out there, but Delia also had found it a bit thrilling and was anxious to see how Patsy would reply. She wouldn’t be surprised if Patsy issued a stern correction about her stepping out of bounds...

> **I miss you, too.**

Delia stopped. She stood still with her heavy backpack over both shoulders in the middle of the airport walkway just staring at her phone. Other travelers with suitcases and children and packages, tired from travel and anxious to get home for the holidays, were fanning around her, slightly irritated. But Delia was completely oblivious. “I miss you, too,” she read the words again. 

> I wish I could be with you now. Delia typed out. She stared at the words for a minute and then deleted them. Instead, she asked...  
> How are you?

> **I’m okay. Packing...**  
> **I leave for my dad’s in the morning.**

Delia fantasized about saying, “Great. So, listen, Pats...turns out that--and you’re going to laugh when you hear this--turns out that...it just took me getting on a plane and flying across several time zones to realize that I want to be the one to go with you to whatever beautiful place you are going to after your dad’s. I want to be the one to lie with you on the beach, to hold your hand, to kiss you, to sleep with you, to not sleep with you. ;) You know and, basically, it turns out that I just really want to be with you.” 

But she didn’t. Instead she just stood there, staring at her phone, trying to manage the deluge of words and feelings and desires that she suddenly felt she wanted to share with Patsy. And then her phone buzzed again.

> **Good flight?**

> It was okay. Long.

And then, finding it again impossible not to say some of what she was thinking, she added... 

> I dreamt about you.

There was a long pause. On her end, Patsy was glued to her phone, had been since Delia’s first text (”Pats...”). She missed Delia already, felt oppressed by and irritable about the amount of time it would be before she would see her again. And now, Patsy sat there on the edge of her bed, more than a little curious about the nature of Delia’s dream, considering how to respond...

> **You did?**

> I did. 

Delia wasn’t really sure what else to say--it had been, on the one hand, such a dull dream. And on the other, so much more than that.

> **Was it...a good dream?**

> It was a good dream. :)

> **Deels… :)**

> I know.

> **I wish you were coming with me to Tahiti.**

Ugh, there it was...Tahiti, one of many details Delia could do without knowing. Delia felt bitter about her own poor life choices as she thought about the one equation (Patsy + Warm Tahitian Sun = Paradise) and held it up against the other she had chosen for herself… (No Patsy + Cold Rain = ?*&%$#%!!!).

> I wish I were, too.

There was a long pause. Delia felt jealous and she was not a little resentful of her own role in Patsy’s being about to fly to Tahiti for a holiday with another woman. What had she been thinking? She might as well have told her to sleep with someone else. Suddenly, she felt like she needed to wrap up this conversation and move on or she might never make it home. 

> Pats, I’m at the airport. Need to get my bag and head out.  
> And it’s quite late here now…  
> Text you tomorrow?

> **Sure**  
> **I can chat same time tomorrow between seeing my dad and my flight if you can swing it…**  
> **After that...not sure when I would be available next.**

> Okay, I’ll do my best to get you then.

> **Bye, Deels.**

> Bye, Pats.

Delia slipped her phone into her backpack.

...

When Delia finally made it home, she briefly visited with her mam and Edwin and then took her things up to her room. She should have been exhausted from the long day of travel--and she was a bit--but she was also too wired to sleep. She opened her laptop and started reading through some of the writing samples to prepare for their MLA interviews.

By the time Delia woke the next day, it was early afternoon and her mam and Edwin were both out. There was a note that Lili had called--some of their mutual friends were going to be at the pub later and she wanted Delia to join them. Delia sighed at the thought of what she was going to do about how she and Lili had left things, but decided she would go after she had dinner with her Mam and Edwin and just try to make it an early night...

Several hours and four pints later, Delia excused herself to go to the loo. She was having a surprisingly good time. It felt great to be back and with her closest friends again, and the beer had helped ease some of her anxiety about what she was going to say to Lili if it came up. But when Delia opened the door to head back to the table, Lili was there waiting for her. Delia knew immediately why she was there. She had seemed a little extra affectionate with Delia at the table, taking every opportunity to touch her arm or leg for emphasis when she spoke. And as the pints had accumulated, the touches had lingered a bit longer.

Lili and Delia stood facing each other for a long moment--neither of them saying anything. Delia was suddenly having a feeling she recognized as not entirely unlike dread. Her mind was racing. Instead of feeling excited by Lili’s having sought her out or enjoying the anticipation of what might come next, she just felt...bad. She found herself trying to quickly problem solve how she she going to get out of this without hurting Lili’s feelings excessively...

Lili took Delia’s hand, but Delia spoke first. 

“Lili, I…” Delia started.

“...you’re in love with someone else,” Lili interrupted. 

“Wait, what? I am?” This was not at all the difficult conversation she had been triaging in her mind just seconds before.

“You are,” Lili sighed. “You act as though we haven’t been best friends for over two decades. I know you,” she continued. “I can see it in your eyes.” She paused. 

“And I can tell that this,” Lili gestured back and forth between them, “is not it for you. At least not anymore, not right now.” Lili smiled warmly as Delia reached for her other hand. 

“I mean…” Lili continued quickly, shrugging and gesturing with one of Delia’s hands in hers, “I’m not saying I don’t hope I’m wrong. But...I’m pretty sure I’m not. Am I…?” Lili winced slightly. 

Delia thought about it. “No, I suppose you’re not...” she sighed. And then she tried to smile as she pulled Lili close and hugged her tight. Tears began to fill her eyes as she considered that she might actually be over her decades-long thing for her friend. And though her arms were around Lili now and she could feel Lili’s heart beating against her own chest, it felt a little like she had just lost someone very dear to her. 

“I love you so much,” Delia said into Lili’s neck as she hugged her, not wanting to let go.

Lili breathed in deeply and pulled back, looking into Delia’s eyes and smiling weakly as she raised her hands to gently wipe the little tears now sliding over Delia’s sweet, rosy cheeks. “I love you, Deel,” Lili said with her head dipped slightly, directly engaging the obvious pain in Delia’s eyes with her own. “And I always will.” And then she hugged Delia again. 

They stood there holding each other for a long minute before Lili pulled back and brought them forward, “Now...tell me. Who’s the lucky woman?”

...

Delia woke the next evening cuddling her laptop, her cheek smashed against its top edge. She had stayed up a good bit of the night and had slept fully through the day. Her cheek had been pressed into the edge of her laptop for so long, it had made deep red marks that weren’t likely to disappear for hours. But she hadn’t noticed the laptop was there until she went to stretch and had accidentally pushed it off her bed. Alarmed by the sound it made when it hit the wood floor, Delia felt momentarily disoriented. She scanned the dark room quickly to remind herself where she was and why. She was in her old bedroom, which her mam had kept basically untouched since she’d last lived there. It was like a slightly sad and yet kind of sweet shrine to a younger version of herself.

She rubbed her eyes and reached to the floor for her laptop. She really hoped she hadn’t damaged it--it was her lifeline to all the work she needed to take care of over the holiday. And then, as she drew her arm back with the laptop in her hand, Delia recalled what she had been doing just before she fell asleep. And with a tinge of trepidation, a dollop of elation, and a heaping cup of curiosity, Delia opened her laptop and found the chat log from the night before...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 15: Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiIynI0tjB0)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> We dream -- it is good we are dreaming -- by Emily Dickinson
> 
> We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --  
> It would hurt us -- were we awake --  
> But since it is playing -- kill us,  
> And we are playing -- shriek --
> 
> What harm? Men die -- externally --  
> It is a truth -- of Blood --  
> But we -- are dying in Drama --  
> And Drama -- is never dead --
> 
> Cautious -- We jar each other --  
> And either -- open the eyes --  
> Lest the Phantasm -- prove the Mistake --  
> And the livid Surprise
> 
> Cool us to Shafts of Granite --  
> With just an Age -- and Name --  
> And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian --  
> It's prudenter -- to dream --
> 
> ^ Some light foreshadowing in this if you dare to decode it... :)


	16. Not Not Sexting

Okay, quick recap: Last we saw Delia, she was...with a tinge of trepidation, a dollop of elation, and a heaping cup of curiosity, finding her chat with Patsy from the night before….

\---

> So, Pats…

> **Yes, Delia… :)**

> Hi… :)

> **Hi :)**

 

> Have a minute to chat?

> **Looks like about 10 or 15 until we board…**

 

> Okay, I’ll get right to it then…

> Sooo…

 

> How are you? :)

> **Good. Just taking care of a few loose ends with candidates for MLA. You?**

> Not bad. Met some old friends out for drinks tonight.

> **Fun?**

> Yes. And interesting…

 

> **How so?**

 

> I……..  
> Had a chat with Lili… :)

 

> **And…?**

> She thinks I’m in love with you.

 

 

> Hello?

 

> Pats?!

> **Sorry, sorry! Wanted to move to a quieter part of the lounge…**  
> **The couple next to me were discussing some bathroom issues a bit too loudly for comfort… :)**

> **Wait, hold on. Just saw your msg about...**  
> **You had a chat with Lili and she thinks you’re in love with me?**

> Yes…  
> I mean, Lili seems to think I’m in love...  
> Just not with her…  
> So...she asked me who I was interested in.  
> And...long story short, apparently I have a look in my eye and when I talk about you I defo give it away…  
> Though to be fair, you are proper lush...it’s not just my opinion. ;)

 

> **:) And…?**

> **Do you agree with her? Are you in love with me, Delia?**

 

> Well, it certainly has made me think... :)

 

> **I see…**

 

> Feels woefully unoriginal, I’m afraid.  
> I mean, if I really wanted to be different from the rest of the world...  
> I would need to be significantly more resistant to your charms, wouldn’t I? ;)

 

> **Delia...**

> **a) It’s been MONTHS...really almost a year, depending on when you start the clock.**  
> **I’m fairly certain that’s a record hold-out for falling in love with me. ;)**

> **And b) You say that like I’ve actively tried to seduce you...**

> Haven’t you?!

> **Hardly!**  
> **Besides, if you recall, I was the one who told you I wouldn’t fuck you if you begged for it, so...**

> Right, I’d almost forgotten about that.  
> Thanks for the reminder! [SARCASM]

> **No need to yell...just noting the facts of the situation. :)**  
> **And...pointing out that if you really are in love with me, you shan’t blame it all on my expert seduction…**

> So...you admit you’re an expert? ;)

> **I won’t deny I’ve a good bit of experience when it comes to such things... :)**  
> **Even so, you’re hardly innocent in this, Dr. Busby…**

> **Correct me if I’m wrong, but it _was_ you who put her hand on my knee that night in a crowded bar, wasn’t it?**  
> **And don’t think I didn’t notice that you also gave the top of my calf a quick feel before fumbling for my hand… ;)**  
> **Which I’m guessing was your original intent…?**

> Oh, right. ;)  
> It’s such a lovely knee, that one…

> **:)**  
> **Right, well, next time we’re together, maybe I’ll let you have another go at it.**

> **Though I have to say that I’m afraid the fumble you gave it that night…**  
> **whilst not entirely without its charm… :)**  
> **isn’t quite going to cut it.**

> Isn’t it?

> **‘fraid not, Deels. :)**

 

> Pats...

> **Hmm?**

> In all seriousness, I’m so sorry to have waited until just after I landed here to reach out...  
> I know it’s horribly inconvenient.

> It just all felt so overwhelming back when we talked…

> **Don’t be sorry, Delia.**  
> **Things happen as they do...**  
> **You were dealing with a lot.**

> **And anyway, I’m still here.**

> That’s the problem!  
> You’re still there, and I’m all the way over here... :/

> **Right, well, that is a bit inconvenient, isn’t it?**

> **Also, maybe kind of sexy?...in a massively delayed gratification kind of way? ;)**

> How is it that even as a disembodied series of words and punctuation marks you still manage to make me feel things?

> **:) I’d say it likely has something to do with your feelings about me otherwise...**

> It was a rhetorical question, Dr. Mount.  
> But thanks, so much, for the insightful analysis... :)

> **Hey! People pay a lot of money to have me share my thoughts on things, I’ll have you know...**  
> **My “insightful analyses” are highly sought after.**

> Ah, yes. Sorry…  
> Forgot who I was chatting with… :)  
> The esteemed and “highly sought after” Dr. Mount ;)

> **Okay, Delia. I’m going to have to board any minute, so...**

> Gah...  
> Okay, just so we’re 100% clear…

> To summarize… :)

> I might be in love with you, and...  
> Thank you for being so patient with me about the matter. :)

 

> Uh…  
> Hello?

> **Still here...**

 

> ?!?!  
> I think it’s standard courtesy to actually say something when someone tells you they’re in love with you...

> **:) Delia…**

> **First of all, you said “might be.”**  
> **Secondly…you called our feelings for each other “the matter”!**  
> **And thirdly...you know how I feel. :)**

> Do I?

> **Don’t you?**

 

> Right. You “care about me...deeply.”

> **Are you seriously mocking me right now?**

> Maybe? :D  
> You’re not exactly giving me the counter-wooing that might reasonably be expected in return...

> **Ahh, so it’s wooing you’re after? :)**

> I mean, I wouldn’t be upset if you tried a little... :)

 

> **Okay, how’s this…**

> **I’m afraid (deeply...but also, oddly, not at all...) that I may be in love with you, Delia. And...**  
> **I think I may have been for quite some time.**

> **And...**  
> **At the risk of sounding like an excessively sentimental Adele song…**

> **Honestly, Delia, from the first night I collected you from the hallway…**  
> **And you couldn’t be bothered to open your eyes… :)**  
> **And you called me ‘Pats’ like you’d known me forever, and...**

> **Well, it has, at times, felt...eerie and thrilling and heartbreaking and wonderful to be in your presence.**

> **And...there has just always been something about you that has felt different to me.**

> **Something that has tugged at my heart, and...**

> **I find myself wanting to be around you all the time, and…**  
> **wanting to make sure you’re happy and cared for and...**

> **And Delia…**  
> **Now I really am wishing you hadn’t waited until you flew to Wales to start this conversation with me.... :)**

 

> **Delia?**

> I’m here!  
> I’m here… :)

> **Okay, good...thought maybe you had fallen asleep on me ;)**

> Hmmm, fallen asleep on you… :)

> Seriously, Pats, I really am sorry about the timing…

> That said, I’m really, really glad to be talking with you about it now. :)  
> And, though I don’t recall Adele ever singing about finding drunk girls in hotel hallways and helping them to their beds…  
> I am rather enjoying the very “Make You Feel My Love” vibe of what you’ve said… ;)

> Pats, I wish so badly that instead of sending you off to meet whoever for your Tahitian holiday, I wish I could be there with you now....

> **Delia...**

> It’s fine, Pats. I was the one who asked for time.  
> And I meant it when I said I wanted you to go and have a good time.  
> I still do.

> I genuinely couldn’t bare the thought of you at home, alone for the holidays.  
> I just obviously wish that good time you’re going to have in Tahiti could be with me… 

> And...speaking of it *not* being with me, maybe don’t tell me anymore details about it? It will just make things harder...

> **Delia...**

> **Okay.**

> **So…**  
> **You know that I’m flying straight to Los Angeles for MLA from…**  
> **the location that shall go unnamed?**

> I do.

> **So, I guess we’ll see each other next in LA, then?**

> I guess. :’(

> **Hold on…**

 

> **Okay, they’ve just called for boarding to begin...**  
> **Before I go...**

> Yes?

> **I want you to do something for me...**

> Anything.

> **Anything?!**  
> **That might change things just a bit… ;)**

> Anything.

> **Got it… :)**

> **Okay, so, Delia...**  
> **Remember when you were in my office a few weeks ago?**

> Yes.

> **And just before we had our little talk, you stepped towards me?**

> Yes.

> **And...I took a step back because...**  
> **Well, honestly, I didn’t know what was going on, but...**  
> **Remember how I leaned back a bit onto the edge of my desk?**

> Yes.

> **And...remember how you got a little flustered by the sight of my leg as my skirt came up a bit?**

> Wait...  
> You noticed that?  
> Okay... [blushing]. Yes, I remember...

> **It was the same you had touched the Friday before, when we were having drinks...**

> I remember.

> **Do you remember how it felt to touch me then, when we were having drinks?**

> I do... :)

> **Okay, I want you to think about that now...about how it felt to touch me there for the first time.**

> Okay... thinking about it :)

> **:) Good.**  
> **Now I want you to imagine that instead of getting nervous and feeling as though you ought to move your hand away...**

> **I want you to imagine that you meant to reach for my leg...**  
> **That the touch wasn’t accidental.**

> Okay… 

> **And I want you to know… (and this is true)**  
> **I want you to know that I wanted more than anything that night to feel your touch.**

> You did? 

> **I did.**

> **Delia, it was agony sitting there with you.**  
> **I’ve never felt so conflicted about my feelings for someone.**  
> **You have no idea how close I was to…**

> Jeezus, Pats. I wish you had told me! 

> **I know. Part of me does, too. But...I couldn’t. You know why.**

 

> I do.  
> [deep, heavy, heartbreaking sigh...]

 

> **Okay...but try to forget all of that for a minute.**

> Okay.

> **Instead, imagine that when you put your hand on my knee…**  
> **I did what so much of me that night wanted to do more than anything else...**

> Okay…

> **Imagine that I uncrossed my legs.**

 

> [gasp]  
> Okay… :)

> **And when I did...**  
> **You leaned in, and…**  
> **You lightly traced the inside of my thigh with your finger.**

> Pats...  
> This isn’t helping.  
> You’re absolutely killing me right now! 

 

> **Hang on. Stay with me, Delia. :)**  
> **There is a point to all of this.**

> I don’t doubt that for a minute!  
> However, I think the point might be that you’re a sadist and want to torture me...

> **Well, torture of certain kinds can be rather exquisite, no? ;)**

> I suppose you have a point there.

> Okay, I’ll withhold further criticism.  
> PLEASE CONTINUE... :)

> **Okay :)**

> **I want you to imagine that as you traced the inside of my thigh…**  
> **As I felt your light touch moving closer to my…**

> **My desire intensified to the point that...**

> **No matter my resolve or jealousy or hurt…**  
> **feeling your touch there…**  
> **made it impossible for me to tolerate any distance between us.**

> Okay… (still dying. also: heart is breaking a little to be reminded of your hurt :/ )

> **Noted… :)**

> **So...imagine that I insisted that we leave.**  
> **that we go back to my place.**

> Okay… :)

> **And imagine that, just after we exit the restaurant**  
> **just after we turn the corner to head to my place...**  
> **you take my hand and…**

> **you stop me.**

> I do?

> **Yes. :)**

> I find that hard to believe...  
> We’re headed back to yours!

> **Delia...you stop me.**

> Okay… :)

 

> **Do you to remember how cold it was that night?**

> Yes.

> **Okay, so imagine that, after you stop me…**  
> **as we stand there…**  
> **with the cold wind whipping around us…**

> **you slip your hand inside my coat.**

> Okay…  
> (imagining :)

> **And when you reach inside my coat, you don’t just slip your hand inside my coat…**  
> **you reach for me just under my blouse...**  
> **first with just one hand and then with the other…**

> **And for a brief minute, you just hold me there…**  
> **your chilled hands just below my waist, your thumbs lightly caressing my skin just along the top edge of my skirt...**

> [gulp]  
> Okay?

> **And you pause there because…**  
> **you’re enjoying my warmth and softness and…**

> Of course, I am… :)

 

> **:) And the chill of your hands against my warmth causes me to tremble a bit...**  
> **And you can feel this.**

> **And when you do...**  
> **you smile… :)**

> :)

> **And then you slide your hands around and up my back.**

> **And with your fingers spread wide and pressed firmly into my skin there...**  
> **you pull me to you.**

 

> Pats…

 

> **And in that moment, Delia, I want you to imagine that I want nothing more than to feel your lips with mine.**  
> **And so I do...**

> **I raise my hands gently to your cheeks as I’ve wanted to do for so long, and…**  
> **And we share the most glorious, the most tender and lingering kiss, and...**

> **It’s so glorious that...**  
> **even though we know when we get back to my place we will have the privacy to do whatever we want to each other...**

 

> **we still can’t pull ourselves away.**

 

> **So there we are…**  
> **on a darkened street, cold wind blowing…**  
> **lips, hips…pressed together.**

> **And in that moment…**  
> **with our kiss exploring, lingering…**

> **it feels to us as though we are enjoying a lifetime of happiness…**  
> **in the pleasure of a single kiss.**

 

> Pats…

 

> **Delia, when we see each other next…**  
> **we are going to have that kiss and more.**

> **And in the meantime, I want you to think about this one…**  
> **The one we’ve just shared…**

> **Can you do that for me?**

“Delia!” Her mam knocked twice quickly and opened the door. Delia jumped up. “Come on, cariad, you need to get up and washed! We're going to be late for services!” Her mam shut the door and marched off down the hallway.

Delia groaned. She’d lost track of what day it was…had almost forgotten about the Christmas Eve service she’d promised to attend with her mam. Delia wasn’t at all religious, but her mam and dad had attended the Christingle service together for as long as she could remember. And when she was home last, she and Edwin had promised to go with her. Delia was happy to be able to do this, but her mam barging in just then...as she was feeling, again, as if for the first time, all the longing, tension, and frustration she had felt as the conversation with Patsy was unfolding...had reminded her a bit of the time she was almost caught having a “moment” in that very same bed while reading the Price of Salt as a teenager...

Delia closed out of the chat with Patsy and opened her work email to make sure there was nothing important waiting for her... 

There were several new emails, some from Patsy. She skimmed through previews to make sure there wasn’t anything urgent that needed a response...the complete schedule for their upcoming interview of candidates at MLA, info about new materials for each having been added to their Dropbox folder, Patsy’s suite information where the interviews would be held, an out of office reply from the woman at the college with whom Delia had been working on a big NEH research fellowship, and an email from her editor. 

She opened the email from her editor. It was a short reply to something she’d sent very late last night about the dedication for her book:

> Of course, Dr. Busby, we would be happy to make those changes for you. Let me know if you have any others. We'll be sending everything out at 12pm EST. 

Delia looked at the time--Jeezus, her internal clock had gone completely bonkers. She did some quick math. Well, she thought to herself, I guess it’s official: My book has a new dedication!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 16: Ruby & The Romantics’ “Our Day Will Come” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw9RVjEN9OI)
> 
> "Our dreams have magic because we'll always stay...in love this way..."
> 
>  
> 
> [Bonus Track: Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0put0_a--Ng)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	17. Tahiti (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you clicked on a prior link to this and were told it was deleted, I apologize. There was a weird AO3 thing going on where the chapter was not showing up as updated for some reason, so I deleted and reposted.

Patsy squirmed with pleasure as a warm breeze ushered the sticky, restless scent of the ocean through palms and flowering bushes and across her exposed body. She was in Tahiti, alone for the moment, and thinking about Delia. Patsy paused and brought one of her long fingers to her mouth, sucking on it loosely before returning it to the spot between her legs that she was hoping would provide her with some relief from her pent-up desire. 

The flight to Tahiti had been agony. Patsy’s stomach had ached for Delia, and she had barely had an appetite for anything else since their chat. Thinking about the next time they would be near one another made Patsy both excited and frustrated. On the one hand, she obviously couldn’t wait to see Delia again. And on the other, they were going to be spending long days at the conference hotel in LA interviewing candidates in the lounge area of her penthouse with the rest of the hiring committee. She imagined having to ensure for several hours each day and some evenings that she was her most composed and measured Dr. Mount so that she could fulfill her responsibilities as chair and manage the serious and important work of the interviews. She imagined having to do this with Delia just a few feet away, Delia...who now knew her in a way that no one else did. And she imagined having to do all of this with just a spiral staircase separating them from her penthouse bedroom. 

Natasha, the friend she had joined in Tahiti for the holiday, was fun and easy to be around. Patsy was most thankful that she had made the plans for this holiday several months earlier with her and not any of the others--especially not Noelle, with whom things had become progressively more uncomfortable. At first, Patsy had thought Noelle exciting and sexy. She had found her recklessness thrilling and her sexual appetite and sense of adventure compelling. Their first encounter had not only been intense and deliciously chaotic, it had lasted three days. Patsy had emerged from it with several conspicuous love bites and gentle aches in places she had never before been sore after a sexual encounter.

But over the months that they had spent meeting up at conferences and, occasionally, for long weekends together in Paris where Noelle was faculty, Noelle had become less entertaining for Patsy and increasingly desperate for more than she had wanted to give her. And in the last several months, especially, Noelle had become more or less obsessive as Patsy had tried to cool things. It was the link to Garbage’s “#1 Crush” without comment the day after last year’s MLA encounter in the lounge that had first made Patsy nervous. But Noelle had been sending Patsy “love notes,” music, flowers, and poetry without any reciprocation or response from Patsy for months. 

And this is why Patsy had nearly panicked when she saw Noelle’s application for their advertised position enter the pool. She thought about the nightmare of having Noelle join their department and felt a little sick to her stomach. Thoughts of Noelle being her usual cartoonishly dramatic self and surprising Patsy at inopportune and often embarrassing moments was more than enough of a headache for Patsy the couple times a year they would no doubt continue to end up at the same conference no matter the status of things between them. But the thought of trying to carry on with chairing and teaching (and Delia!) and, well, anything really with Noelle as a colleague in her home department was a complication Patsy wanted no part of. The very real and serious problem for Patsy was that, in addition to being a former “friend” of hers, Noelle was quite brilliant and doing remarkable and well-respected work in her field. She had two books out and was so much more advanced in her career than any of their other applicants for the entry-level, assistant professor position that she had, much to Patsy’s horror, seemed on paper to most of the rest of the committee like a great person to interview at MLA. 

Though Patsy strongly suspected, of course, that Noelle’s primary motivation for applying for the position had been to get closer to her, she couldn’t very well say that to the rest of the committee. And so, when the committee had met to make final decisions about narrowing the applicant pool from over 260 to the 12 they would have time to interview at MLA, to avoid either unfairly influencing decisions based on her sexual entanglement with the woman or having to confess that relationship as it were to her colleagues, Patsy had subtly recused herself by adopting the role of facilitator of debate instead of participant. And then she had shuddered with concern to find that, in the final tally, other members of the committee had voted to make Noelle one of the 12 finalists.

Thankfully, though, Natasha was much different than Noelle, and at least for the moment, that was all Patsy need concern herself with. Patsy and Natasha were very similar in a lot of ways, and they were very good at reading each other. Neither formed attachments easily and both tended to enjoy their independence. Natasha was gorgeous--she had a light, coffee-colored complexion, rich brown hair with natural blonde highlights, and she was tall and very bendy from all of the yoga and pilates she had done over the years. Though this might have been enough, her deeper attractiveness for Patsy came from her maturity, her calm, and her physical and intellectual litheness. Patsy enjoyed the simplicity of her movement, and the subtle way she smiled when she found something interesting. And she loved how Natasha seemed to get her in a way that others didn’t, how she always seemed effortlessly attuned to Patsy’s moods and desires. Because of this and the side of Patsy this called forth, sex with Natasha was rarely fast and furious. It tended, rather, to be chill and languorous, restful and sustaining. Patsy had learned a lot about her own body and her own desire from their encounters. And when they got together, they would often play for hours, delighting in the slowly building tension and the extended climaxes that often rewarded their patience. 

Even so, Patsy felt that it was highly unlikely anything romantic would happen between them on this trip. Ever since her talk with Delia in her office weeks before, when she started to recognize that what she was feeling for her junior colleague was different from anything she had ever felt before, Patsy’s desire had become very specific. She wanted Delia, and she wanted only Delia--so much so, that not being able to have Delia, even after they had cleared the air about their feelings for each other, had brought her a new kind of pain. Patsy wasn’t against a little pain in her pleasure with the right person, but she prefered if the person she desired had some direct role in delivering it. This was different. It had felt to Patsy like a particularly cruel and preoccupying injustice that they had to have such a distance between them, even though it was temporary.

When Patsy arrived, Natasha had sensed that she had a lot on her mind and so was fine adopting a wait-and-see approach to their intimacy on this trip. The secluded beach-side cottage they had rented had two bedrooms, and Natasha had not assumed when she got there the day before that they would be sharing a bed. And so when Patsy took her things into the second bedroom shortly after arriving and said, apologetically, that she needed to take care of a few emails for the search before she could fully relax, Natasha had offered to go into town for some supplies for the two of them, leaving Patsy to unpack and settle in and, as it turned out, take a moment to enjoy herself with thoughts of Delia. 

Patsy figured she had at least an hour, probably more, before Natasha returned, so she was not rushing. She took her time and thought about how it would feel to finally be in Delia’s presence again, how it would feel to be alone with her for the first time since their chat, to feel Delia’s desire openly and without any reservation or confusion about what it meant, and to finally be able to express her own. She thought about the fact that what they had acknowledged at a distance might make things both deliciously awkward at first and thrilling, about how it might take a bit for them to acclimate to being in each other’s presence with all of that in mind. 

Patsy pictured seeing Delia first in her suite among too many others. Delia was supposed to get into LA just as the reception in Patsy’s penthouse was set to begin, so there would be no way around that. She considered the restraint she would have to show and thought about the look they might share when they first encountered each other. She found this exciting to imagine since no one around them would have any clue how charged this first glance would be for them--it would be a secret they alone would share. And then she thought about how, hours after this first look between them, the doors to her penthouse would finally close and close out the rest of the world, leaving her and Delia to do whatever they wanted for several hours. She played through different scenarios about how things might unfold for them...against the door, on the furniture in the lounge area where they would be interviewing the next morning, on the stairs, in her plush king-size bed. There was virtually no part of the suite in which Patsy did not visualize being intimate with Delia. 

As Patsy touched herself, she felt both aroused by nearly any thought of Delia’s presence and deeply frustrated by the hard, bleak, persistent reality of Delia’s physical absence. She was in Tahiti, a place most considered to be a paradise on earth, and yet...the thing, the person she needed for it to truly be a paradise for her was thousands of miles away. She moaned lightly as she imagined in great detail how Delia’s lips might feel pressed against hers were she with her now, how Delia’s tongue might respond to hers, how Delia might taste, how it would feel for Delia to lick and suck gently on her warm neck. She found these thoughts arousing and preoccupying, but sadly, they just weren’t enough. Nothing she could conjure was. As much as she enjoyed these thoughts, what she craved more than anything was the unpredictability of being intimate with Delia, of feeling her spontaneous responses to their touches--and these were things she couldn’t design or fully anticipate, no matter the depth of her desire or the power of her expert imagination. 

Though Patsy had learned over the years how to please a wide variety of women of different preferences and orientations and though she always enjoyed the creative problem-solving required to tailor her seduction, it was ultimately her lack of total control over the responses of her partners, the small and sometimes large element of unforeseeability, that Patsy found most intoxicating. Ever since her first romantic encounter with a woman, though she was quite capable of taking care of herself, Patsy had found that the pleasure of exploring her own desire by immersing herself in the desire of others was uniquely satisfying. She found the women she was attracted to so wonderfully complex and interesting--physically, emotionally, intellectually--and so learning about the ways each engaged these parts of themselves to express their desire for her was something that never ceased to entertain and delight her. 

Patsy relaxed her hand and groaned, conceding defeat. In an odd and quite unfortunate turn of events, she had become so preoccupied with images of Delia that it had started to feel like too much work to focus her thoughts and her hand on her reason for indulging them. The release she longed for was, apparently, not in her cards. She would not be delivered from her impotent desire this afternoon. 

Patsy sighed, opened her eyes, and looked down at herself. Her sheer, white blouse lay open, her braless chest was fully exposed, and her nipples were alert to the soft breeze coming through the window above her head. She ran her tired fingers longingly from just between her breasts to the base of her stomach where her smooth, pristine abs dipped down slightly. She thought about how different this week would be if Delia had come with her and sighed again as she reached to the nightstand for her phone and towards the next best thing...the quiet traces of Delia left behind by her words.

Several minutes later, as she lay motionless and wide awake on the bed, staring blankly at the still ceiling fan, Patsy heard Natasha returning with groceries. She buttoned her blouse and went out into the open lounge/ dining/ kitchen area just outside her bedroom. It was time to accept that, though she couldn’t have what or whom she most wanted right now, she was still in a beautiful place with a person whose company she very much enjoyed. It would be good to have the distraction of Natasha’s conversation, she thought to herself as she opened the door and entered the common area. 

Hearing Patsy come out of the bedroom, Natasha looked up from the bag she was unpacking. And then she smiled. She walked away from what she was doing at the counter and towards her friend. When she reached Patsy, Natasha gathered the bottom of her blouse and pulled it out, taut. Her smile grew as she studied the disarray of buttons. Patsy had apparently not done a very good job with this and so one side was comically lower than the other. Natasha’s eyes made their way slowly up the front of Patsy’s shirt to her neck. She brought her fingers to Patsy’s chin and gently turned her head. Patsy’s hair was also a bit of a mess--it was almost as if she had slept overnight with it up like that. Natasha dropped her fingers from Patsy’s chin and found Patsy’s eyes as her face turned back towards her. They were wide and slightly pained as she began to realize how she must look to Natasha. And then Patsy smiled weakly and watched as Natasha’s smile transformed into one that looked more like sympathy than amusement. 

Natasha sighed deeply--she felt bad for her friend. She paused for a moment--still holding the bottom of Patsy’s soft blouse in her hand, reviewed her friend’s uncharacteristic dishevelment, and considered this alongside her earlier distractedness. Natasha looked back into Patsy’s eyes and finally felt like she was beginning to understand. And then, with deep kindness and understanding, she asked...

“Need some help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 17: The Strangeloves’ “I Want Candy” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Vw9RGm1tM)
> 
>  
> 
> [Bonus Track: Garbage’s “#1 Crush” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7LLua5NCM)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	18. Tahiti (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soooo sorry for the delay in updating. Work has just gotten really busy and a few other things came up. This is a short chap, but hopefully it will address some concerns and move things along a bit. Thanks for your patience. I expect work will be busy here for a while, but I promise to update as soon and as often as I can! xx

Patsy stood before Natasha, stunned by the sudden realization of how she must look to her friend. Her shirt was buttoned all askew. Her hair was up as usual but looked as though she had just awoken from a long and restless night’s sleep. And she was feeling flushed and frustrated by not having been able to fully satisfy herself and release the pent up sexual energy that had built rather quickly as she and Delia had acknowledged their feelings for one another.

Natasha’s question still hung in the air: “Need some help?” 

Patsy looked into Natasha’s eyes, trying to sort out what to do, what to say next. 

Natasha was still holding the bottom of Patsy’s hastily buttoned shirt in her fist and looking into her eyes sympathetically. Her brow was now furrowed as she saw the pain building in Patsy’s eyes. She tilted her head slightly and said, “Pats...”

And then suddenly, overwhelmed by emotion she simply could no longer contain, something broke inside Patsy. She lost her breath and burst out crying...bringing her hand to her mouth, embarrassed by the intense emotion, feeling raw and vulnerable in a way that she never had before.

Seeing this, Natasha immediately pulled her friend close, released her shirt and threaded her arms around her, holding Patsy steady as she cried huge, sobbing tears into her shoulder. This went on for several minutes: Patsy gripping Natasha’s shoulders with both hands, her face buried into one. Patsy just couldn’t stop sobbing. And Natasha stood firm--her arms wound tightly around Patsy’s waist and up her back--and held her. Natasha’s steady, close hold told Patsy that this was okay, that she could relax and let herself release whatever it was she had been trying to hold inside. Natasha wasn’t going anywhere and she wasn’t at all alarmed by or afraid of the intensity of the moment.

When Patsy’s tears finally started to wane, she pulled back. Her head dipped slightly, she sniffled and brought her hand to her nose so that it covered her mouth slightly. And then she looked up at Natasha somewhat sheepishly, apologetically.

“I’m so sorry,” Patsy said. “I don’t know why I…”

“No need to apologize,” Natasha reassured her quickly, her right hand now resting softly on Patsy’s waist. “You’re going through something. It’s fine. You’re fine.”

“I am, I guess.” Patsy nodded and sniffed again. “Still, I’m sorry. I didn’t see this coming. I…” She walked away to look for tissue. “There’s someone…” Patsy continued, “and we’ve only recently acknowledged how we feel and...it’s wonderful, really. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“Where is she?” Natasha asked.

“She’s back in Wales with her family for the holiday. I’ll be seeing her at MLA next week. She’s new faculty in our department and is on the hiring committee. It’s just that...” Patsy looked away and then moved to sit down on the sofa. She drew her legs up under her, and Natasha joined her--sat next to her and placed a soft hand on her back.

“‘Tash,” Patsy looked back up, her eyes filling again, “I’ve never felt this way. I feel completely unmoored and consumed by her and…”

“You’re in love,” Natasha completed Patsy’s thought for her. 

“I am,” Patsy said. “And she is. So why am I crying?”

“Well,” Natasha sighed knowingly, sympathetically, “maybe because you’re so used to being in control and not at the mercy of some pesky emotions? Maybe because you miss her? Maybe...because love, as wonderful as it can be, can also be terrifying and moving in ways we simply can’t fully control or anticipate?”

“I suppose so,” Patsy agreed. 

“You’re so kind, ‘Tash,” she added. “I don’t want to ruin our holiday by being a basket case about something that most learn to cope with as teenagers,” she laughed weakly. “I must seem horribly amateurish to you right now…”

“Hardly,” Natasha smiled. “You look radiant and beautiful and I’m so very happy for you.” Natasha reached up and lightly caressed Patsy’s right cheek with the back of her hand. 

“This pain is what it is... It’s part of the thing, no matter how many times you go through it. Try not to feel bad about feeling however it is you feel. Try not to add an extra layer of pain by telling yourself that you ought to be able to fully manage it. Just stay with it. And know that this will pass, for better or worse. It always does. And if you’re lucky, it will turn into something else that is less terrifying and more deeply sustaining. But this...” Natasha waved a hand in front of Patsy briskly and Patsy felt a shiver run through her. “This is the stuff that makes life worth living. Try not to wish it away or contain it too much, even if it causes you some discomfort.”

Patsy smiled a little half smile, grateful for the reassurance. “I suppose you’re right. The flip side of this...weird outburst, whatever it is, has been so amazing and wonderful. I’ve never felt such pleasure from the mere existence of another person in the world. And that’s saying a lot! We haven’t so much as kissed yet!” Patsy laughed as she said this.

And then, more seriously, Patsy looked at her friend and said, “Thank you.” She reached for Natasha’s hand and squeezed it tightly. They sat there for a long moment, neither saying anything. And then...quickly switching gears, Patsy moved things on: “So...I hear there’s a beautiful blue ocean out there somewhere. Up for a swim before we make dinner?”

…

The rest of the week passed rather slowly, and Patsy found herself alternately …agitated and wishing the time would go faster so that she could see Delia or ...totally content and lounging in the sun, swimming, making gorgeous meals of fresh fish and ripe, exotic fruits in their beachside hut. 

When the last night of their trip finally arrived, Patsy actually felt a bit sad. Though they had known each other for some time and had been physically intimate many times, Patsy felt as though she had gotten to know Natasha differently this trip...she had more fully experienced her deep understanding and kindness...and, for that, she had grown to adore Natasha. She was going to genuinely miss her calm presence and easy companionship. 

Patsy packed her things for their early departure the next morning. She and Natasha had booked the same flight to LA, so that would help her ease back into things a bit. After getting everything ready, Patsy tucked into bed and thought about seeing Delia, thought about her bright eyes and smile. How thrilling it was going to be to actually finally be in her presence. She closed her eyes and smiled, quickly drifting off to sleep.

As Patsy slept, she had echoes of the same dream all night. And when she awoke, refreshed and excited about the next leg of her journey, she felt both completely rested and also as if she hadn’t slept at all. She awoke in the same position she had fallen asleep in several hours earlier. And she had the sensation that, from the moment she closed her eyes until the moment she opened them to the morning light, she had had a single, wonderful dream all night long. The oddest part, especially for a dream that had seemed to last all night, was that nothing had happened. To the best of Patsy’s recollection, it had consisted almost entirely of sunlight and warm breezes…there was no action, no drama, no angst or excitement, no conversation...no anything, really.

Delia was there, but they had simply been sitting across from one another at a sun-bleached table...tea cups, blue sky just outside the window, curtains blowing between them in the breeze. And yet, it felt to Patsy as though it were the most beautiful and exciting dream she had ever had, one she never wanted to end...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 18: Kinnie Starr’s “Alright” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8yBRZbHCM)
> 
>  
> 
> "Your mind leads my mind to a world more beautiful."
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 
> 
>   


	19. The MLA: Year 2 (“i carry your heart”)

Delia’s connecting flight to LA was delayed due to weather in Chicago, and by the time she arrived at LAX, the rush hour traffic was so bad, it took her airport shuttle over an hour to make it the 20 miles to the conference hotel. She should have been exhausted after the long day of travel she’d had just after having returned from her holiday in Wales. The repeated time-travel alone should have exhausted her--five hours back to the east coast from Wales, three more hours back in time from there to LA. But Delia wasn’t tired--she was excited and exhilarated. She had been waiting with heated anticipation for this night to come, and it was finally (finally) here. 

When she got to the hotel, Delia unpacked quickly, took a hot shower, and got changed for the reception already underway. Forty-five minutes later, entering Patsy’s nearly packed penthouse suite, Delia was captivated by the feeling that she had finally made it. The suite was stunning: 30-foot high ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows, a distant view of the up-lit Hollywood sign, a spiral staircase off to one side, an open bar just in front, several catering staff buzzing around offering bite-sized canapes and champagne and craft cocktails to guests. Delia could hardly believe that she belonged here--that these were now her people, her colleagues and friends. And she could hardly believe that, best of all, she would be spending some quality time after the reception ended with Patience Mount--hands down the most gorgeous, admired, and sought after academic hosting a reception tonight at the MLA. 

As she scanned the room trying to locate said hostess, Delia felt for the tiny paper scroll in her pocket. She had impulsively copied the last stanza and line of one of her favorite e.e. cummings’s poems onto a small piece of paper and rolled it tightly. It would be hours before she and Patsy could be alone, so Delia had fantasized about slipping the tiny package discreetly into Patsy’s hand at some point during the evening. Imagining Patsy reading the words made her insides flutter…

> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
>  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
>  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
>  higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
>  and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Delia wanted to see the passing recognition of the intimacy conveyed by the words on Patsy’s face, however briefly, to connect with her in this small way before they could connect later in other ways. And the truth was that, since they had last chatted, Delia _had_ begun to feel as though she carried Patsy’s heart in hers. And she cherished that, cherished that Patsy had dared to expose her heart to her, that she had been entrusted with it in ways that were new for Patsy. 

Confirming that the tiny, delicate scroll was secure in her pocket, Delia continued to search the room for Patsy. Finally spotting her chatting up a small group by the open bar, Delia paused and watched as Patsy touched the arm of the woman to her left while delivering the final bit of a story she was telling them. 

Delia stood still for a moment, in awe of Patsy’s always gorgeous, now also sun-kissed form. The holiday must have treated her well, Delia half-lamented, suddenly feeling a surge of jealously bubble up into her throat. She couldn’t help but recognize how exceptionally beautiful Patsy looked, even for her. Her hair was up in a slightly different way than usual...in a soft, sexy, tucked bun, with a sweepy bump in the back--a few stray locks delicately kissing her cheeks. Her eyes and lips sparkled. And she was wearing a slim-fitting, deep red outfit with a plunging neckline that just barely ticked the boxes for professional attire. Delia couldn’t keep herself from imagining tracing Patsy’s neck and shoulders with her finger, applying soft kisses as she did so.

And, of course, because it was Patsy, it wasn’t just that she looked gorgeous, she was compelling the room in other ways. In fact, she was manifesting a version of Dr. Mount that Delia had never had the opportunity to witness...more seductive and elegant than usual and, yet, also completely professional and relaxed. Like most things, she made this rare combination of affects seem effortless. Everyone to whom she was speaking (and several to whom she was not) were listening with rapt attention. And Delia watched as those around her stole glances of her perfect form and subtly exposed bits...their eyes permanently narrowed by her presence, their smiles nervous. And then, as if Patsy had some sensitive internal radar set to register Delia’s presence, mid-laugh with her hand on another woman’s arm, she glanced back over her shoulder and caught Delia’s eye. 

Seeing Delia, Patsy’s already broad smile designed for others got a bit wider, her dimple deepened on one side, and her eyes registered her deep happiness. Patsy then winked, making Delia’s heart shudder with delight. And with this, with barely a word to those she was speaking with, it seemed, Patsy excused herself from the group she had been entertaining and made her way towards Delia. Several people tried to interrupt her progress, but Patsy would not be delayed any longer. She wove through and around them gracefully and swiftly, smiling and acknowledging them and then leaving them quickly behind...

When she finally stood before her, Patsy reached for Delia’s elbow softly. “Hi,” she said, her voice slightly husky and thin. As she drew her hand away, she let her fingertips and nails lightly graze the surface of the back of Delia’s arm, causing a chill to pulse through Delia and goosebumps to appear. And then, looking Delia over fully and responding with a half, dimpled smile, Patsy’s eyes narrowed and found a natural resting place in Delia’s. The women said nothing for a brief moment. 

“I got here as soon as I could,” Delia finally said, feeling as though she had to distract herself with chatter about something mundane or otherwise collapse into an awkward puddle of desire for the woman standing before her. “My flight was delayed out of Chicago.” And then, suddenly feeling a surge of boldness, Delia leaned in and spoke softly into Patsy’s ear, “You look fucking gorgeous. How long until the others fuck off?” Delia briefly felt Patsy’s cheek touch hers as she smiled at the words.

Patsy pulled back and took Delia’s hand briefly in both of hers and then let it fall, eyes darting off to the side as if she had just recalled they were not alone. “The reception is supposed to end at 10, but people often linger at these things, I’m afraid,” she said softly in a voice she never used with others. And then she winced slightly, apologetically. “But there’s an open bar you can entertain yourself with until then.” 

Delia looked at her watch--it was almost 8:30. 

Just then, Dr. McAdam announced his approach as he called out...much too loudly, even in the already very loud room...“Dr. Busby! So nice of you to finally join us! We were worried you might not make it in tonight. Chicago is always a tricky transfer this time of year.” Delia winced as Dr. McAdam spoke and sprayed light spittle in her direction as he did so. Not only was he embarrassingly loud, his breath already reeked of too many whiskeys.

Patsy squeezed Delia’s elbow again quickly and said, excusing herself, “I’ll catch up with you later. I see someone I need to…” And then she silently mouthed to Delia as she moved away, “Sorry!” 

As Patsy was taking her leave (a leave for which, Delia noted to herself, she would most definitely need to chastise Patsy later), Dr. McAdam insisted, “You mustn’t stand there any longer without a drink. Let’s get you something,” and guided Delia towards the open bar. 

\---

The next hour and a half passed much more slowly than Delia had been willing it to. Though Delia and Patsy mostly circulated in different parts of the suite, Delia kept an eye on the hostess from a distance, admiring the way she deftly moved among all those present, making each guest feel special and their presence desired. Patsy seemed similarly always aware of where Delia was--and whenever she caught Delia watching her, the corner of her mouth curled with subtle joy.

Shortly after 10, as if on cue, the party had started thin out a bit. But you wouldn’t have known it from the volume of those present. The room was, in fact, much louder now with fewer present than it had been when Delia first arrived. As Delia surveyed the room, trying to will those left to make their ways towards the door, Dr. McAdam once again sidled up to her. 

Delia cringed as he made his way to her side. He was now totally and obviously shit-faced, reeking of whiskey. He sloppily made small talk again with her, asking more about her holiday in Wales and how she was getting on in general. “Good, good,” he filled the space left behind by his questions, leaving very little room for her to actually say much, which Delia found both slightly obnoxious and boring. 

“I’m glad you are settling in. And your book is all set, is it? Yes, well, that’s got to be a relief. You’re way ahead of the game, kid,” he said, spraying light whiskey spittle into Delia’s wine and across the outside of her glass as he spoke. Delia looked down disappointed and grudgingly sat her nearly full glass on the bar. The bartender nodded a subtle acknowledgement of her reason for discarding her glass, smiled sympathetically, and poured her another.

“So, kiddo,” Dr. McAdam pulled Delia closer to him by her elbow, “speaking of settling in...” She winced as he did this. His sweaty, meaty little hand felt crude and out of place on her elbow. “It seems congratulations of another kind are in order,” he winked at her.

Delia’s nose curled up slightly. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she managed politely, barely paying attention as she glanced around the room and made eye contact with her friend and colleague, Tom, who raised his eyebrows unhelpfully as if to say, “Good luck with that!” 

“You know what I mean,” Dr. McAdam pinched Delia’s elbow with his stubby, rough fingers and winked again. 

And again, Delia felt disgusted by the gesture. She continued to look around the room, only now she wanted to find Patsy, she wanted just to glimpse her delightful presence as a way of cleansing her mind of this increasingly distasteful interaction with drunk Dr. McAdam, who pressed on--leaning in too close to Delia’s ear and spraying, conspiratorially, “Dr. Mount” as he enunciated the D and T. 

At hearing him say this, Delia’s eyes widened. Natasha was across the room watching the awkward and uncomfortable looking encounter between Delia and Dr. McAdam and beginning to look concerned. Though Delia didn’t know who she was, Natasha new very well now who Delia was. 

Delia couldn’t believe what Dr. McAdam had just said. How could he possibly know anything? She and Patsy had just barely seen each other since discussing their feelings. And even so, why would he talk with her about it like this? They were new colleagues who had had very little interaction since her arrival on campus aside from the few, recent hiring committee meetings--and discussions during those hadn’t established much concordance between them, to put it mildly. She and Dr. McAdam were not, by any stretch, friends.

Dr. McAdam crudely pushed on, either unaware of or unconcerned with Delia’s discomfort, “One doesn’t meet women like her everyday. Sadly for me, she doesn’t apparently go for men of a certain age.” He leaned back adjusted his bow tie, as if THAT were it and he was just too dignified for the likes of her. Delia suddenly felt nauseous and angry. 

“I’m sorry,” Delia said, gathering every bit of poise and professionalism she could muster with her senior colleague. “I think you’ve had too much to drink. I should be going…” She moved to walk away, but Dr. McAdam reached out and took hold of her elbow, leaning in again much too closely.

“No need to pretend with me.” His words sprayed lightly on Delia’s cheek causing her to raise her hand to wipe them away. 

“I saw you together back in town. I saw the little lover’s quarrel you two were having,” he pulled back and smiled into Delia’s wide, horrified eyes, “Seemed delightfully intense, though I take it from the look of your greeting earlier, you’ve made up?” he added with a wink. 

Just then, out of nowhere, an arm appeared between them...Patsy’s arm. She swiftly removed the drink from Dr. McAdam’s hand, guided him by his shoulders towards Tom, directed one of the staff to retrieve his coat, and ushered both him and Tom out the door. 

While this was happening, Delia quickly retreated to the restroom. Her thoughts were racing. So Dr. McAdam had been there the night she and Patsy met for drinks? He’d seen them talking and, no doubt, had seen Delia being flirtatious? He must have also seen her put her hand in Patsy’s lap and the tense exchange that had followed that. 

Delia didn’t really care that anyone might know about her interest in Patsy, but that Dr. McAdam, a man she was quickly learning to find both tedious and despicable, had seen them…and that he had spoken with her about what he had seen as he had...made Delia feel soiled and dirty. And furious. She felt protective over Patsy. The echoes of his words about Patsy's desirability burned in Delia’s ears and made her want to go after him and pointedly divest him of any notion that he might have any chance, ever, of getting anywhere near close to Patsy personally--no matter his age. 

While Delia was in the bathroom getting increasingly indignant about what had just happened, Patsy, having just swiftly orchestrated Dr. McAdam’s removal from the party, was looking for Delia. She could find her nowhere among the remaining guests, so she approached Barbara, another of their colleagues on the hiring committee, to ask if she had any idea where Delia was.

“I didn’t see where she went,” Barbara said, guardedly. “I think she disappeared just after you saved her from Dr. McAdam. But Pats…” Barbara waited to continue until Patsy’s eyes stopped searching the room and rested on hers. 

Patsy eventually looked back at her, impatient and wide-eyed, “What?!” 

“I don’t want to tell you what to do,” Barbara continued, observing her colleague’s sudden irritation, “but I think you need to be careful. Dr. McAdam is horrid--we all know that--but I overheard him talking loudly tonight to the director of the Press about having seen you and Delia...he seems to think something’s going on between you. And...I don’t need to tell you what a shame it would be if that gossip were to harm Delia in any way. She’s only just gotten here, and with all that happened last summer with Dr. McAdam...you likely wouldn’t come away looking so great either.”

Patsy was now silently and sternly looking at Barbara. She did not at all like for anyone to direct her actions--or even suggest to her what she should or shouldn’t be doing in her personal life. She preferred to keep such things separate from her professional engagements. But this seemed to be a situation in which it might be impossible to keep the two separate.

Feeling deeply annoyed with Barbara, embarrassed that others had been discussing her and Delia, and now also protective over Delia, Patsy quickly considered how best to respond. She hadn’t seen Dr. McAdam at the bar the night that she and Delia had had the falling out, but she didn’t doubt that the intensity of their exchange could have revealed to anyone watching more about their feelings than she might have wanted to have shown them. And so, Patsy did the only thing she could think of in the moment to save both her and Delia from further unwanted speculation: She categorically denied anything was going on and insisted that Dr. McAdam was out of line--once again.

“Of course,” Patsy agreed seriously with Barbara. “I would never do anything to compromise Delia.” And then she added, “What a pathetic little man he is. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered.”

“Well, maybe he’s still bitter that he was relieved of his post against his will...and by a woman, by _you_. Look, Pats, I don’t doubt he’s out of line,” Barbara reassured her, “I know you are sensitive about such things and would never want to harm the reputation of a junior colleague. I just thought you should know.”

“Of course,” Patsy agreed sternly again, feeling more than a little devastated that her intimacy with Delia had become the subject of gossip that others felt entitled to confront them with before it had even had a chance to express itself fully between them. 

“I appreciate your telling me,” Patsy managed as a wave of longing and sadness pulsed through her. She suddenly felt dizzy and a little sick. She wanted Delia or to escape the room--preferably both, but neither seemed possible at the moment. And so she did the next best thing...she excused herself and headed for the restroom to gather her thoughts.

As she turned the corner nearest the downstairs bathroom and out of sight of the main lounge area, Patsy felt a soft hand on her arm: Natasha. “What just happened?!” Natasha said quietly as she leaned in, just inches from Patsy. 

“‘Tash,” was all Patsy could say. She was feeling overwhelmed and angry and sad and didn’t know where to begin, couldn’t settle on the words. Natasha looked into Patsy’s eyes. “Tell me what happened.” She moved her hand to Patsy’s shoulder.

Just then, the bathroom door swung open and Delia emerged. She looked up and stopped quickly in her tracks, stunned to find anyone there. And when she realized that one of those before her was Patsy, she stepped towards her instinctively. 

And then Patsy watched in slow horror as Delia’s eyes traveled from hers to Natasha. She watched as Delia quickly took in the intimate posture of her and Natasha standing there and felt a stabbing pain in her heart as she saw Delia’s chest fall.

“Deels,” Patsy said quickly and reached for her.

“Patsy?!” Delia furrowed her brow as she looked back and forth between Natasha and Patsy. A surge of anger pulsed through Delia--only this time, it was directed at Patsy. Delia clenched both her fists instinctively. She felt suddenly as though she had to get out of there immediately or else lose it right there and say something she might regret in earshot of those still lingering at the reception. 

And then, scraping together the very last bit of restraint she had remaining, Delia removed Patsy’s hand from her arm, slipped into it a tiny crushed scroll, and left the suite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 19: Harlem’s “Someday Soon” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxJldNitCgA)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]  
> BY E. E. CUMMINGS
> 
> i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  
> my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
> i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
> by only me is your doing,my darling)  
> i fear  
> no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
> no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
> and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
> and whatever a sun will always sing is you
> 
> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
> (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
> and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
> higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
> and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


	20. The MLA: Year 2 (“weak but not giving in”)

As Delia made her way to leave the suite, Patsy looked into her hand at the tiny scroll that had been left with her and then back up at Natasha. She was momentarily speechless, stunned by all that had happened. 

Patsy wanted to go after Delia, but she didn’t do that--she didn’t want to risk causing a scene that might confirm what Dr. McAdam had been telling people. So, instead, she opened the scroll Delia had just deposited in her hand and read the words silently…

> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
>  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
>  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
>  higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
>  and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Natasha watched Patsy’s face. She could tell from a quick upside-down glance of the words on the scroll that it was a stanza of a poem. She made out the final line and then said, “Pats...I’m so sorry.”

Patsy looked up, her eyes wide and glassy. She rolled the tiny scroll gently in her now slightly shaky hands, took a deep breath, and disappeared into the bathroom. 

Once she had taken a moment to compose herself, Patsy re-entered the living room where those remaining were saying their goodbyes and making plans to continue the evening’s fun with post-reception drinks in the hotel lounge. She acted the gracious host...smiling and politely declining several invitations to join them in the lounge, patiently waiting for everyone to make their way out, thanking them all for coming...

When she was finally alone, Patsy flopped down onto the sofa and mindlessly started chewing on her thumbnail. She opened her other hand, glancing down hesitantly at the tiny scroll resting in it--a reminder of how totally off the rails the night had gone--and sighed a deep, heavy sigh. And then she unfurled the scroll once again and read the words that made her heart both soar and dive. 

She felt deeply sad as she thought about Delia having written these words for her thinking, probably, that they would be received under a very different set of circumstances, just before a very different end to the night. And then she felt furious. Fucking Dr. McAdam had ruined everything…

Patsy got up, filled with a raw combination of both irritation and longing, and looked for her phone. She messaged Delia...

> I don’t know where to begin, but…  
> We should talk.

And then, considering that that would likely not at all clarify that what Delia had happened upon with Natasha was not what it might have appeared, Patsy added…

> Nothing is going on with Natasha, Deels.  
> She’s just a close friend now--that’s all.  
> She was only making sure I was okay because…  
> Well, I’ll tell you when we speak next.

Though she had seen the texts immediately, Delia was not responding. She was just staring at her phone. The notification that Patsy had messaged her had initially made her quite happy, but then she had fixated on one word in what Patsy had said: 

> “She’s just a close friend **now**.” 

The implication in this was, of course, that she used to be more than that...only **now** was she just a close friend. 

Delia couldn’t help it. She felt jealous and frustrated by the turn things had taken. She also felt deeply wounded--partly by Dr. McAdam’s persistent, invasive “congratulations” about what he had correctly discerned was a budding romance between her and Patsy, but also by what felt like a rejection of sorts...finding Patsy in an intimate exchange with a gorgeous, tan woman who Delia assumed was the friend she had spent the prior week with in Tahiti. 

They were “just friends now,” as Patsy said, but...Delia couldn’t help but feel they shared a closeness that she and Patsy did not yet. And though she didn’t doubt Patsy had genuine feelings for her, this felt wounding.

There was no chance Delia could respond to Patsy tonight. She felt too raw and was concerned something else could be said that would just be too much, and if so, that she might snap back in an uncharacteristically angry or defensive way. It was best she just let her feelings settle for the night, she reasoned. 

And then, several more texts from Patsy came through...

> I don’t know exactly what that pathetic Dr. McAdam said to you, but…  
> He’s been saying things he oughtn’t and creating some potential problems for us…  
> Problems I’ll explain later, but…  
> Just, for now...we need to be really careful.

This just made Delia feel sad and heavy. They hadn’t even had a chance to enjoy the thrill of a first kiss, and things felt so serious and complicated and hard.

> Delia, no matter what happened tonight…, Patsy continued.  
> You have to know that I want nothing else right now than to be with you and to make sure you’re okay.

> Please let me know when we can talk.

Delia didn’t respond, though she was lying on her bed rereading the words “I want nothing else right now than to be with you” over and over again, taking great comfort in them. 

Patsy poured herself a huge glass of wine and drank it quickly. And then she poured herself another. She made her way upstairs with the second glass and the rest of the bottle, replaying everything that had happened and considering what could, what needed to happen next.

Checking her phone repeatedly and seeing nothing from Delia, Patsy’s heart hurt. Her stomach felt hollow. She stared at her earlier messages to Delia and then typed out one more series of short messages before falling asleep…

> I’m so sorry for everything that happened tonight.  
> You don’t deserve any of this.  
> I miss you.  
> I love you. x

…

The next morning Patsy woke early and with a clear sense of purpose. She showered, made sure the suite was ready for their long day of interviews set to start at 9am, ordered some muffins and coffee delivered to the suite for the committee, and spoke briefly with Dean Ramsey about Dr. McAdam’s behavior at the reception the night before. 

After hearing Patsy’s account of Dr. McAdam’s drunken behavior and inappropriate gossip at the reception, the Dean determined that he was to be removed from the hiring committee immediately. Patsy had initially been resistant to including Dr. McAdam on the committee, but Dean Ramsey had assured her that she had spoken with Dr. McAdam and he was clear that there was to be no drinking at work-related events (something that he had claimed was a factor in his poor judgement with the graduate student). She had assured Patsy that Dr. McAdam was clear he was to stay away from discussion of any of his students’ and colleagues’ personal matters. 

And now, since Dr. McAdam had clearly violated both of these injunctions, Dean Ramsey apologized profusely to Patsy and insisted that she, the Dean, would call Dr. McAdam herself to let him know he would no longer be permitted to serve on the hiring committee.

Once the committee, including Delia, was all present in the suite at 8:30, Patsy explained with very little detail that Dr. McAdam would no longer be serving with them and that if they had any questions about his removal, they could speak with her about it later. Patsy did not linger on Delia’s look as she spoke the words--just nodded seriously and moved onto the next order of business: a brief review of the first three candidates they would be speaking to before lunch.

…

The morning progressed without incident, and then for lunch, though they hadn’t much time, the committee decided they would get out of the hotel and grab something to eat from one of the famous LA food trucks in the area. 

Delia excused herself to use the restroom before they all left the suite together and messaged Patsy:

> I guess we should talk soon.  
> Sorry I didn’t respond last night.  
> Anyway, thanks for reaching out.

Patsy saw the messages as they came in and felt mildly relieved. Though the words seemed a bit cool and distant, finally, Delia had responded--that was something. 

Being preoccupied with the candidates all morning had actually provided some relief for Patsy, but anytime her mind drifted back to the events of the night before, her anger with Dr. McAdam and the ache in her heart returned. It was excruciating not being able to just talk to Delia, to clear the air about Natasha and Dr. McAdam--his complicated and somewhat sordid history that, as far as Patsy knew, Delia had still not been told of. 

Though things were apparently going to be tricky for them going forward, at least for a while, Patsy wanted Delia to know that it didn’t change how she felt about her, and so she messaged Delia back quickly before they left the suite... 

> I meant everything I said. x

…

After finding one of the many excellent area food trucks, “Taco ‘Bout It,” and grabbing a quick bite to eat, the committee went back up to the suite to review their notes before the long series of afternoon interviews. 

Patsy was particularly anxious about the second to last candidate on the schedule: Noelle. Though she couldn’t share the reasons for knowing so with the others, she knew very well why Noelle had applied for the job. Patsy hadn’t seen Noelle since last year’s MLA--though she had heard from her several times since. 

The last time Patsy had seen her, a very drunk Noelle had “surprised” Patsy from behind in the lounge area at the main MLA hotel while she was chatting with others. After annoying Patsy by interrupting her evening, Noelle had accidentally punctuated a dramatic statement, in French, about wanting to fuck Patsy by turning an ankle and falling to the ground. In so doing, Noelle had managed to get Patsy alone--though all that had happened was that Patsy had made sure Noelle got to her room and was okay, while repeatedly deflecting all of her sloppy advances...including several “Je t’aimes.” 

What Patsy didn’t know, of course, is that Delia had seen her leave with Noelle that night at last year’s MLA as they walked through the lounge, arm-in-arm, to the hotel elevators. Patsy didn’t know that Delia had assumed when she saw this that what she was witnessing was Patsy slipping off for an intimate encounter with the woman. 

And what Delia didn’t know was that the woman she had seen Patsy leave with was called Noelle. Further, Delia had no idea that the Noelle she had argued they interview at MLA was the very same person she had seen Patsy with that night. And she didn’t know that, though Patsy and Noelle had had a romantic past, the night she observed them together, nothing had happened. 

And so, when 4pm came around and Noelle entered the suite for her interview, two of those present were suddenly very uncomfortable. 

One was trying her best to pretend that Noelle was like any other of the candidates they would speak to at MLA. The other, as soon as Noelle entered the suite, was quickly trying to sort out how the romantic interest of their committee chair had made it to the MLA interview pool without so much as a word from said chair about knowing her. 

Delia’s mind was racing and she instantly, again, felt angry. It felt to Delia like she couldn’t get away from Patsy’s dalliances. The women she had been involved with just seemed to be everywhere. 

Yet again digging deep to compose herself and act the professional she had been hired to be, Delia struggled to hide her discomfort, nod politely at the appropriate times, and ask Noelle the questions she had prepared to ask before things had taken such unfortunate turn. And Delia watched as Patsy held fast to her role as Dr. Mount, chair of the department and chair of the hiring committee. 

Though she was usually impressed by Patsy’s impeccable skill in this regard, the apparent ease with which she managed this during Noelle’s interview just made Delia angrier. It took everything she could muster for Delia to hide the fact that she felt as though her insides were being eaten away. And with every minute that passed, she couldn’t shake thoughts of Patsy, Dr. Mount, being intimate with this woman. 

Delia had no idea how obsessive and crazy Noelle had been with Patsy. That was not the Noelle that showed up for this interview. Though she seemed to Delia to be a little unusual and dramatic in her delivery, she was also very upbeat and animated and smart and stylish and gorgeous in her own way. She came across as high femme and dramatic--with a very sharp edge...tall, lean, blond, and...fashionably unique. Delia considered every part of Noelle as she spoke and wondered how a person who had been attracted to Noelle could also be attracted to Delia. They couldn’t be more different.

And then Delia’s mind wandered back to Dr. McAdam’s words from the night before--the disgusting way he sprayed whiskey spittle on her as he spoke them. It was all too much--she couldn’t focus. 

So when the final interview for the day had ended, Delia gathered her things and quickly, politely made her way out of the suite with the rest of the committee--avoiding all eye contact with Patsy. Delia messaged her on the way back to her room...

> I think it’s best if we just press pause on things with us.  
> Let’s get through these interviews and chat after it’s all over.

When Delia’s texts came through, Patsy was alone in her suite and just about to text Delia to see if she wanted to come back up to the suite for a drink, to talk. 

Patsy had no idea that Delia had recognized Noelle and that that might have played any role in her wanting to “press pause on things.” She assumed that it was mainly about their having been seen and outed by Dr. McAdam and so decided it wouldn’t be fair to Delia to press her to do anything remotely risky. She decided that the kindest, most mature response would be to give Delia the space she needed and not ask her to do anything that might lead to further unwanted speculation about the two of them. 

And so, though it pained her to do so, Patsy messaged back...

> I agree it’s probably best to wait and let things settle a bit.  
> We’ll talk after MLA.  
> Have a good night.

Delia’s heart sank when she read Patsy’s reply. Though she had been the one to ask for some space, Patsy’s agreeing they should “wait and let things settle a bit” felt disappointing and, oddly, like a rejection of sorts. There had been no “x” after the message...the texts from Patsy were getting progressively less intimate. 

Patsy was just trying to respect what she hoped was Delia’s apparent temporary discomfort with anything more and didn’t, of course, know that Noelle’s showing up as a candidate that day had had anything to do with it. And Delia didn’t understand that Patsy’s primary concern right now was for her, for respecting her desire to pause things and for protecting her from damaging speculation and gossip--she just felt the unwanted distance growing between them.

Both Patsy and Delia were feeling the weight of all that had transpired and come to light in the last 24 hours. They each struggled with the apparent reality that, if anything was going to happen between them, it was not going to happen now. And so, reluctantly, each steeled themselves for making a good show of it, for pretending with others and each other that all was fine, for being “on” in the ways they were expected to be…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 20: Rilo Kiley’s “A Better Son/Daughter” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sy7y54XAE)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	21. "I Will Come to Your River"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your patience the past couple months. I know it's taking a while for me to update, but I am definitely continuing and promise I will post as often as I can--hopefully a bit more often as some things at work ease up a bit soon.

_Delia was smiling broadly as she broke through the surface of the water into the wide-open, blue sky. She hadn’t felt so free, so full of pure, unadulterated joy since she was a kid growing up in Wales._

_She stayed more or less in the same place for the moment...treading water, grinning from ear to ear. She was giddy with anticipation. And then, as if she knew contact was imminent, she pushed the water at her sides to spin around a quarter turn, shifting her gaze, looking deep into the water as she did so...quickly left, then right, then left again._

_Suddenly, Delia felt the tight squeeze at her ankles that she had been anticipating and squealed with delight, tried to kick her legs to get away. But it was no use. The hands holding her were too strong, their grip firm and secure around her sturdy ankles._

_One by one, she felt the hands climb her calves, dramatically...then her thighs, and finally, her waist. With each new hand-hold, she felt a tight, ticklish squeeze. She was laughing now, her head back, and getting weaker. The will to struggle was leaving her._

_Finally ready to concede defeat, Delia went limp. She bent her knees up to her chest and raised her arms, waiting for the creature who had her in its clutches to emerge. And then, not half a second later, a calm, gorgeous, bright and smiling face came up for air. Arms lifting Delia a few inches farther above the surface of the water._

_Delia squealed in high pitched delight as she threw her arms around the shoulders of the sea creature who was now holding her tightly by the waist. Not waiting until it opened its eyes, she drew herself close, her smiling cheek pressed tightly to the creature’s ear…_

_Patsy turned quickly when she felt Delia’s cheek against hers and buried her face deep in Delia’s neck--playfully kissing and sucking on her there repeatedly, blowing a loud raspberry into her soft, wet skin. Delia squealed again--causing Patsy to smile, kiss her girlfriend on the cheek adoringly, and press her own bikini-covered breasts against her girlfriend’s bare chest and give her a tight squeeze._

_Patsy then leaned back and relaxed into a floating position on the surface of the water, pulling Delia into the same position next to her as she did so. Delia dipped a shoulder just slightly into the water and opened one eye in Patsy’s direction. Her face was sore from smiling and laughing._

_And then, with Patsy’s arm draped loosely under her back, her fingers curled up and resting lightly against Delia’s hip, Delia relaxed onto her back and began floating next to her girlfriend...blissfully, effortlessly…breasts, stomach, face, and thighs soaking in the bright sunny day._

_The women stayed like this...eyes closed, a few fingers of the hands between them now lightly hooked together. Holding hands loosely like this, they allowed their bodies to drift apart until one of them squeezed the hand of the other pulling them back together again, repeatedly…their legs and hips bumping lightly against one another in the cool water when they did so._

_After several minutes, Delia turned her head towards Patsy again and opened her eyes a sliver. The sun was so bright, at first she could just barely make out the gorgeous woman floating next to her, holding her hand. As her eyes adjusted, Delia could see Patsy’s bright hair floating loosely around her, pooled just under the surface of the water. Patsy’s hair made the water look extra shimmery there, a beautiful pink-golden turquoise. Patsy’s face was smooth against the sky. She looked relaxed...a slight smile on her pink lips._

_Delia’s heart swelled delightfully, and she felt her stomach tighten. She loved this woman with all her being and was certain that she had never felt so happy as she did in this moment._

_Patsy could feel Delia’s eyes on her and opened one eye conspicuously and looked towards Delia. Finding her girlfriend watching her as she had suspected, Patsy’s smile extended devilishly from one corner. And then, without warning, she let go of Delia’s hand, rolled onto her stomach, kicked her legs, and disappeared deep under water._

_Seeing this caused an “oh shit!” to escape Delia who then flipped over ungracefully and squealed as she had before...anticipating another “surprise attack” from below._

_…_

_Several minutes later, back on shore, tired and tingly from their time in the water, Patsy and Delia lay side-by-side under a broad beach umbrella...their legs peeking out, exposed to the warm sun._

_Patsy was on her back--one arm straight down by her side, the other forearm resting across her eyes. Delia was lying stomach down, her head turned towards Patsy, watching the beads of ocean water slowly evaporating from her girlfriend’s bare stomach. Delia exhaled slowly and felt her body get heavy, felt all of her muscles relax deeply._

_And then, feeling the urge to touch the beautiful creature next to her, Delia propped herself up on one elbow, slid her soft, warm fingers across Patsy’s stomach. Her thumb lightly traced the bottom of Patsy’s ribcage, absorbing the remaining droplets of seawater there as it did so…_

_Patsy smiled but kept her eyes closed. She was concentrating on every bit of Delia’s touch--it felt soft and warm and tender...it felt like love._

_While Patsy lay still like this, Delia slowly and lightly explored all of the contours of Patsy’s drying midsection with her fingertips. Goosebumps spread across Patsy’s stomach and down her arms and legs. She squirmed a little and inhaled slowly. Even these slight movements of Patsy’s...her gentle squirming and her chest rising with her breath...made Delia’s insides flip, her stomach clench, and her desire intensify._

_Delia was watching Patsy’s face now, she wondered how long she could touch her like this before Patsy responded, took over, and took her the way she had so many times already since they arrived just a few days before. She could tell Patsy was struggling with the impulse. She watched Patsy curl her fingers into the thin blanket beneath them and press them deeply into the dense sand underneath._

_Unable to keep her distance any longer, Delia scootched over a bit and pressed her soft, warm lips into the tender skin next to Patsy’s bellybutton. She felt Patsy’s muscles contract as she did this. God, she loved this woman. Delia smiled and ran a wide, flat tongue across Patsy’s stomach, tasting Patsy’s warmth and the salt of the drying ocean._

_Feeling the warm strength of Delia’s tongue against her, Patsy squirmed again--this time, in a more pronounced way. Delia reached for Patsy’s arm to still her...she didn’t want her to take over yet, she wasn’t done exploring._

_As she pulled one cup of Patsy’s bikini top down over her breast, Delia took Patsy’s cool nipple and breast into her warm mouth. At this, Patsy’s breath left her for a moment and she drew one leg up and towards Delia. The slow intensity of the moment was starting to make it impossible for her to stay still._

_Delia pulled back, pausing to enjoy the sight of Patsy’s perfect breast and hardening nipple. And then she applied a soft kiss just underneath Patsy’s breast--pressing her mouth and nose up into the soft tissue there and breathing the deeply intimate and intoxicating scent of Patsy’s skin into her lungs gratefully._

_The beach was private. Patsy had made sure of it when she rented their cottage. They had been barely clothed since they had arrived--fucking, making love, lounging in the sun. And yet Patsy felt exposed and vulnerable now as Delia held her, licked her, watched her, kissed her there on the beach. She loved it all so much--Delia’s desire, her curiosity about her body, her deep appreciation and attention to little details, her exploration and touch._

_Patsy wanted to open her eyes, to reach for Delia and pull her topless, damp body against her own, to kiss her deeply. She wanted to take her now on the beach, to be inside her, to pleasure her. But Patsy did not give into her desire--she resisted her usual impulse to control what was happening and instead used the energy to will herself to relax, to let go, to let Delia..._

_…_

_A couple hours later, after enjoying each other fully and then drifting off into an exquisitely restful nap, Patsy and Delia walked the short path back to their cottage hand in hand._

_When they got inside, they showered, dressed, and put the kettle on for tea. While Delia brought everything for their tea to the table by the front window, Patsy excused herself for a minute, saying she had to get something from her bag._

_Waiting for Patsy at the table, watching the steam rise off the fresh tea now in little cups, the fingers of one hand loosely resting on the handle one of the cups in front of her, Delia tried to appreciate every bit of how she was feeling now, so thoroughly happy and relaxed. Though she was certain it couldn’t be true, it felt to Delia in this moment like she had always felt this way. And it felt like she always would._

_Delia couldn’t imagine being any more fulfilled...until, that is, Patsy returned to her--smiling, her wet hair pulled back loosely--and kissed her tenderly on the lips before joining her at the table. Delia’s eyes closed spontaneously as soon as she felt Patsy’s lips press into hers, and they remained closed for a beat after she felt Patsy’s lips release them._

_When Delia opened her eyes, she felt a shiver pulse through her and was struck by the dream-like vision of the sun-bleached wood table before her...two delicate, filled tea cups in their saucers, sun streaming through the open window, a warm breeze blowing translucent linen curtains across her field of vision. Across the table, Patsy sat quietly, smiling, watching Delia._

_And then Delia noticed the small black box on the table between them..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 21: Ibeyi’s “River”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIjxuheQg0I)
> 
> [Bonus Track: Juliah’s cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Let it Be Me” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P6JrGwPUTc)
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	22. The MLA: Year 2 (“the cold hill side”)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one. Enjoy!

When Delia woke, she instinctively slid her hand under the duvet and across the bed to feel for Patsy. As her arm fully extended into the crisp, cool sheets, her mood fell. She was alone...in a large, cold, impersonal hotel bed, cheek pressed awkwardly into the crumpled corner of a pillow case. She was both literally and figuratively not anywhere close to being in bed with Patsy. 

Her eyes were still closed, and instead of opening them as her reality continued to pull her farther away from her lush dream, she clamped them shut tightly and furrowed her brow. Maybe she could crawl back into the night if she tried hard enough.

And then, as if some kind of sick joke, she heard the voice of her radical feminist poetry professor--the one whose class had made her decide she wanted to major in literature as an undergrad. She heard Dr. Wingrave’s clear, crisp elocution as she did her best sarcastic recitation of John Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”:

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,  
Alone and palely loitering? 

Delia pictured Dr. W’s eyes as she said the words, wide and delighted, pretending to take the knight’s sad, tortured plight at the whims of La Belle Dame seriously.

The sedge has withered from the lake,  
And no birds sing. 

She saw the way the corners of Dr. Wingrave’s mouth had turned down at the end of the line ("and no birds sing")--clownishly, mockingly--in a way that only she could pull off...as if to say, “Poor, poor knight. Has the beautiful lady hurt you with her love?”

Delia recalled how the whole class had spontaneously burst into laughter at this--they loved it when Dr. W did these mock recitations, when she dramatically recited the poems of men who had been celebrated for centuries or more for “self-indulgently” (if poetically) exploring the “evil” power of women who dared to toy with the poets’ sensitive emotions and egos...making them feel bad with their love. 

But now the joke was on Delia. She had awoken feeling, self-indulgently, like the “knight” of Keats’ poem... 

And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—  
The latest dream I ever dreamt  
On the cold hill side

As if she, too, were the unfortunate protagonist in a fairy tale gone awry. Because of love. And passion. She was the butt of her own joke. Part of her had invoked the memory in self-ridicule--a particularly frustrating habit of hers, god forbid she ever take herself too seriously--and there was no escape. ‘Poor, poor Delia,’ she mocked herself with her thoughts and grimaced into her pillow. 

She was still (gah) at the fucking MLA. The FUCKING MLA, with its over 10,000 academics all dressed in black, all stress and pretentiousness. And, now, she was also further embedded in her own personal hell of requited unrequited love, or unrequited requited love, or something. 

As she tried to get her bearings a bit more, she thought wistfully of her gorgeous dream of sunshine and love and Patsy, of being able to enjoy her fully. And then her thoughts returned to the cold, bleak reality of their last communication via text.

Delia’s heart had fallen when she’d read Patsy’s reply to her suggestion that they take a break from things and focus on the search. Though she had been the one to ask for some space, Patsy’s agreeing they should “wait and let things settle a bit” had felt so utterly disappointing, devastating even, and, oddly, like a rejection of sorts. There had been no “x” after the message...the texts from Patsy had been getting progressively less intimate.

And then, as if in on the joke that was Delia’s present reality, as if cued by some demonic puppet master, her alarm sounded and the obnoxious “Go, Speed Racer!” theme song from 1967’s “Speed Racer” cartoon played loudly on the nightstand just next to her head.

She had thought the song hilarious months ago when she had chosen it because she usually woke up raring to get on with her day, but now it just seemed to further mock her despair and lethargy. She did not feel up to the pretense of adulting today--of professionalism and pretending to be casually unaffected by the presence of the woman she loved and longed for more than anything or anyone she had ever loved and longed for. 

…..

When Delia arrived at the suite for the day’s interviews, Patsy was in full Dr. Mount mode, going over the schedule with Barbara. They would extend offers for campus visits to the top three candidates immediately after MLA with the goal of making a formal job offer to one of them by early February.

“Early February,” Delia repeated to herself resolutely. She could do this. She would do this. She had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Outro for Chapter 22: Dusty Springfield "To Love Somebody" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdcRAHt7H9A)
> 
> [Bonus Track: “Go, Speed Racer!” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9eCqwzAjTY)
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 
> 
> La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad  
> BY JOHN KEATS
> 
> O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   
>  Alone and palely loitering?   
> The sedge has withered from the lake,   
>  And no birds sing. 
> 
> O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   
>  So haggard and so woe-begone?   
> The squirrel’s granary is full,   
>  And the harvest’s done. 
> 
> I see a lily on thy brow,   
>  With anguish moist and fever-dew,   
> And on thy cheeks a fading rose   
>  Fast withereth too. 
> 
> I met a lady in the meads,   
>  Full beautiful—a faery’s child,   
> Her hair was long, her foot was light,   
>  And her eyes were wild. 
> 
> I made a garland for her head,   
>  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;   
> She looked at me as she did love,   
>  And made sweet moan 
> 
> I set her on my pacing steed,   
>  And nothing else saw all day long,   
> For sidelong would she bend, and sing   
>  A faery’s song. 
> 
> She found me roots of relish sweet,   
>  And honey wild, and manna-dew,   
> And sure in language strange she said—   
>  ‘I love thee true’. 
> 
> She took me to her Elfin grot,   
>  And there she wept and sighed full sore,   
> And there I shut her wild wild eyes   
>  With kisses four. 
> 
> And there she lullèd me asleep,   
>  And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—   
> The latest dream I ever dreamt   
>  On the cold hill side. 
> 
> I saw pale kings and princes too,   
>  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;   
> They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci   
>  Thee hath in thrall!’ 
> 
> I saw their starved lips in the gloam,   
>  With horrid warning gapèd wide,   
> And I awoke and found me here,   
>  On the cold hill’s side. 
> 
> And this is why I sojourn here,   
>  Alone and palely loitering,   
> Though the sedge is withered from the lake,   
>  And no birds sing.


	23. The MLA: Year 2 (the final day)

Delia held the tip of her pen in her teeth and was completely disengaged from the conversation happening around her. 

She was watching Dr. Mount, who was sitting directly across from her in the seating area of the penthouse suite. Observing the effortless, breezy charm with which she interacted with others would never get old for Delia. These academic job interviews could be so repetitive and exhausting and (Delia was quickly learning) so boring, since there were certain questions that needed to be asked of every candidate and only so many ways to answer them. 

They could be boring, that is, unless one of the people interviewing was Patience Mount. Patsy had a way of disarming candidates, finding what was most interesting about them, and engaging genuinely with that. It was an amazing thing to behold. 

The candidates invariably knew exactly who Dr. Mount was before entering the interview suite--she was, after all, both a bright and shining academic star and chair of the hiring committee. This prior knowledge of her usually caused candidates initially to regard her cautiously. You could see it on their faces...they watched her nervously, excited about and mildly terrified by having the opportunity to talk with her. 

It was the last day of interviews and Delia was relieved about that. It had become increasingly arduous to sit through these conversations across from Patsy. As she watched Patsy smiling infectiously while probing their candidate about the central claims in her dissertation and their implications for the field, Delia’s mind started to drift. And so did her eyes.

First, they fell to Patsy’s neck...Delia had been so looking forward to kissing Patsy's long, soft neck, breathing her in there. Of all of her fantasies about being with Patsy, kissing her neck had been the one her mind kept returning to on the flight out to LA. And now, close to it but so far away from kissing it, Delia watched the muscles there subtly tense and relax as Patsy spoke, laughed, leaned forward, touched herself mindlessly with her fingertips there.

And then, Delia's eyes drifted down to Patsy’s chest. To the subtle, respectable cleavage that always seemed to catch the thin gold chain she wore. She imagined kissing Patsy there. Pausing to feel the soft skin between her breasts lightly cup her lips as she did so.

Sensing a natural pause in the conversation, Delia looked back up to Patsy’s face. And to her horror and surprise, she found Patsy watching her. Barbara was now commenting on something that had just been said and so everyone in the conversation was looking at Barbara--except Patsy who was watching Delia watching her.

For this one brief moment, eyes locked, surrounded by others, Patsy and Delia felt almost as if they were alone. Delia quickly flushed red but she didn’t look away. She was curious about the expressions she saw washing across Patsy’s face as the seconds ticked on. At first, she had looked a little surprised to find Delia’s eyes fixed on her chest. Then her eyes had softened as Delia’s eyes rose to meet hers. And then, Patsy’s eyes had narrowed as she smiled faintly, warmly out of the corner of her mouth. 

Delia suddenly found she couldn’t take the intensity of the look any longer and averted her eyes. What was the point of it all now? she thought to herself. The tension between them would have no outlet for several weeks at least--especially considering that it was seeming increasingly likely, as the interviews progressed and they continued to rank candidates, that they would be bringing Noelle--Patsy’s ...ex? ...fling? ...repeated dalliance? ...friend with benefits? Delia wasn’t really sure what to call her, what exactly she had been to Patsy--to campus as one of their three finalists. 

Delia had resolved to herself that she would do whatever it took to make it through till the end of the hiring process in early February without broaching that and other sensitive issues with Patsy. It wouldn’t be easy, but things had taken such a complicated turn with Dr. McAdam’s creepy observations, Noelle’s ending up in the interview pool for their job, and the other woman she’d seen consoling Patsy the night of the reception. 

She was still thinking of this as she slowly ate from a bag of chips during their lunch break while rereading Patsy’s replies to her message from the night before about getting through the rest of the MLA interviews and chatting after. 

> I agree it’s probably best to wait and let things settle a bit.  
> We’ll talk after MLA.  
> Have a good night.

The words sank in her stomach and settled in there making her feel mildly nauseous. She missed Patsy, missed their energy together. Wanted it back. It was agony being in her presence, so close and yet so far out of reach.

Just before they started their final interviews that morning, Delia had stepped out of the suite to make a phone call. She had contacted the airline to see if there was a flight later that evening she might find a seat on. The quicker her exit after their work was done, she had reasoned, the better. 

To her great relief, she had been able to get a middle seat in the last row of a red-eye flight that, miraculously--considering MLA usually jammed packed all the flights--wasn’t overbooked. She’d never been so happy to secure what was arguably the absolute worst seat on the least desirable flight cross-country. Immediately after they finished their final day of interviewing, Delia went back to her room, showered, packed her things, and headed out to the airport.

On the shuttle to LAX to catch her flight, Delia sighed and stared blankly at the traffic, listening to the intermittent swipe of the windshield wipers. After everything that had happened, after the general craziness that always surrounds the MLA, she was happy for the relative calm and quiet of being driven in LA traffic. 

Though she had initially felt a bit rejected by Patsy’s cool agreement that they “wait and let things settle a bit,” Delia now felt equal parts sad and relieved that they had put things off a bit. She was emotionally exhausted and needed something, _anything_ to give. 

It wasn’t at all that her feelings for Patsy had cooled. In fact, it was just the opposite: She still very much wanted, almost desperately so, to be with Patsy--and that terrified her. 

Delia was finding it impossible to muster it at the moment, but she longed for some, any hopefulness about a future with Patsy. She wasn’t used to feeling this way. She had had strong feelings for others, but she wasn’t used to feeling like she _needed_ someone else. And if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t much like it. It was exhausting and uncomfortable. And almost as much as she longed for Patsy, she longed for the discomfort of feeling intensely vulnerable to ease. 

….

While Delia was headed to the airport, Patsy found herself back at the conference hotel spontaneously choosing to get off the elevator on Delia’s floor and then turning down the corridor to Delia’s room. 

Patsy had just come from meeting up with Natasha for a drink. She'd brought her up to speed on what had happened since they talked last, the look she had shared with Delia earlier. And Natasha had tried to convince her to stop trying so hard to keep a respectable distance from Delia.  


“Pats,” Natasha reached for her hand across the table. “You love her. You want to do what’s best for her. I can see that.” 

Patsy was now looking off across the bar at some random distant vase of flowers, trying to think about what Natasha was saying, trying to maintain some composure about it all. Natasha paused. She waited for Patsy’s eyes to return to hers again. 

“But Pats…” she continued. “If what I saw the other night is any indication, Delia might just be a bit overwhelmed--maybe it would help her to talk to you? Why not just go to her? Tell her what happened face-to-face, reassure her of your feelings...tell her that you’re there, aren’t going anywhere.”

The truth was that Patsy had never felt this way about anyone, and the reaching out she had done this far hadn’t been easy for her. It had actually be kind of excruciating to put herself out there like that and not get much in return. She was used to being sure of herself and taking chances in many areas of her life, but this was new for her--wanting someone so badly, someone who was keeping her at a distance. 

“I dunno,” Patsy shook her head and then looked up, one eye squinting a bit, revealing her concern, revealing that she was questioning herself a bit. “I think I may have already said too much. Maybe she just needs some space.”

Patsy thanked Natasha for trying to help her sort it out. It was really comforting to have someone who knew her as well as Natasha did to talk with, someone who was so gentle about it all. Even so, Patsy had resolved to give Delia the space she needed, and that’s what she intended to do...until she stepped on the elevator to go back to her suite. In that moment, she felt compelled to find Delia. To hold her if possible. To tell her how she felt. To talk with her about what they might do going forward to manage the rumors without ignoring their very strong feelings for one another. 

....

When Patsy got to Delia’s room, however, there was no answer. 

She knocked again, waited for a minute, and then spotted Tom at the end of the hallway. She instinctively moved away from Delia’s door and pretended to have been looking for Barbara’s room when her and Tom’s paths intersected.

“Oh, she’s not in her room,” Tom replied, helpfully. She’s downstairs with the others waiting for me. We were in the lounge finishing up drinks, about to head to dinner. I just ran up to drop my bag off and change quickly. Want to join us for something to eat?”

“The others?” Patsy found herself suddenly brighten at the words. Maybe that’s where Delia was. She decided to take him up on the offer to join them for dinner. With the others around, she might not be able to talk to Delia right away as she had hoped, but being in Delia’s presence would be something--and perhaps they would talk after.  
…..

As Patsy was headed downstairs in the elevator with Tom to join the others, Delia was gathering her things and making her way through LAX to get in line for airport security. She pulled her phone out, looked back at her last messages with Patsy, and impulsively typed out another:

> Pats, I’m headed back east on the red-eye tonight.  
> At LAX now.

Delia paused for a moment and looked back at Patsy’s first messages after that ridiculous Dr. McAdam has ruined their evening. She felt a pain in her heart seeing how Patsy had reached out and recalling how she’d felt it impossible to respond warmly. 

Feeling now like she wished she had been able to respond differently, wished that she had been able to be with Patsy as they had planned, even if they would need to keep a low profile for a while, Delia typed out another series of messages...

> “I feel a little sick about how I responded to your earlier messages right after the party.”  
> “I’m sorry, Pats. You reached out. Were kind and loving. And I just couldn’t…”  
> “I miss you. xx”

Delia reached the front of the line and tossed her phone in her backpack, placed her things on the belt to go through the xray scanner at airport security. She stepped into the body scanner, held her arms up in the requisite position, and sighed. 

….

As Patsy rode the elevator with Tom, she glanced down at her phone and noticed she had several messages there from Delia. She opened them and, not wanting to interrupt the story Tom had begun to tell her about having shuttled Dr. McAdam back to his hotel room after the reception, just scanned them quickly.

“He just kept saying more and more horrible shit,” Tom was saying, “like...‘Those women know what they do to us, ol’ boy--it’s just a game they play.’”

“Pats,” Tom continued, “I think he’s just completely and hopelessly, dangerously clueless about all of what’s happened. He just refuses to take any responsibility for any of it.”

Patsy was now looking down at her phone, but she managed a “Right.” Tom looked at her quizically. The elevator doors opened, and as she and Tom stepped out, Patsy looked up and found a group of her colleagues, minus Delia, and some of their partners gathered together, waiting for Tom so that they could go to dinner.

Patsy’s heart fell as the visual confirmation of Delia's absence sunk in. She now deeply regretted having said she would join them. And she deeply regretted having let Delia go. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 23: Norah Jones “You don’t know me” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2_9Rkk4f_g)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	24. Something's Gotta Give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When we left Patsy at the end of the last chapter, she was still at the MLA and had just found out via text message that Delia had taken an earlier flight home. Feeling her heart sink at the news, she quickly designed an exit from the dinner she had just accepted an invitation to...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, intrepid readers (if you’re still out there)! 
> 
> I just want to apologize for my long (ahem) break from updating this fic. I have loved writing it and always intended to come back to it, but life threw a delightful and completely absorbing curveball my way, and I just had to go with it for a bit. 
> 
> That curveball has a name and a beautiful and amazing heart, and many of you know her as "Scribbs" (The Scribbler). I won’t say much more about that for now, but now that you know why I was absent and with whom, I feel I should apologize to you (even more so than for not updating this fic) for my role in pulling her away from her writing. I have missed it almost as much as you, I can assure you...though the excitement and consolation of getting to know her as I have has certainly mediated the pain of that quite a bit.
> 
> Okay, that’s all I’ll say about that for now. Onward and upward!
> 
> Also: Just as a heads-up, this is a very short chapter that I drafted a long time ago, but it will get us one step closer to where we need to be going. And speaking of that, I have also drafted the next chapter, which I am hoping will make up for some of the delays. ;) Hope to post that one soon. 
> 
> Thanks for your continued patience. And always, for reading! x

“I’m sorry—looks like I’ve just missed a call from my father’s care facility. I’d better call them back. Go ahead on without me. I’ll try to catch up with you in a bit if I can.”

Patsy was quite talented when it came to finding ways of getting out of social engagements. As someone who was highly sought after, someone who liked to have time to herself, and someone who hated to let others down, she’d long ago had had to find ways of getting out of things without those expecting her to participate feeling like it was due to a lack of interest in spending time with them—though she supposed that’s what it boiled down to. 

She genuinely liked her colleagues, but it’d been a long few days of interviewing and emotionally stressful stuff with Delia. There was no way she could eat tonight. The only thing she longed for more than being with Delia at the moment was retiring to the relative calm and quiet of her room and having some time to herself.

When Patsy got back to her room, she shrugged off her smart, still freshly ironed looking Dr. Mount uniform and drew a hot bath. She poured a glass of wine and settled into the tub, trying to blank her mind and focus on the warmth and softness of the water surrounding her.

It worked. She felt soothed by the hot bath and wine. It softened her and allowed the tension and concern to fall away a bit. And as the stress fell away, it was replaced with a sense of calm. She closed her eyes and sighed a deep, comfortable sigh. 

Things had certainly not gotten off to an easy start for her and Delia, but rather than feel knotted up and worried about everything, she felt as she sank into her scented bath water that everything was going to be okay. 

After lightly toweling off and draping her still-damp self in one of the thick hotel robes, Patsy poured a second glass of wine, sat on the edge of her bed, and picked up her phone to reread Delia’s texts.

> “I feel a little sick about how I responded to your earlier messages right after the party.”  
> “I’m sorry, Pats. You reached out. Were kind and loving. And I just couldn’t…”  
> “I miss you. xx”

She thought for a minute about how, even though she felt more relaxed, the dull ache in her chest had not lifted. Reading through Delia’s texts seemed to deepen it, and it occurred to her that it was just a waste that either of them feel anything other than warmth when they thought of the other.

So she texted Delia…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 24: The McGuire Sisters' “Something's Gotta Give” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWruAboXK44)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


	25. 'Back to the Lift' and Beyond...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second-to-last chapter in this version of their love story...

> I understand, Patsy texted Delia.  
> Everything just got a bit jumbled and complicated.

Patsy paused and thought about the simple fact that Delia existed in the world--her amazing heart, her energy, her cheekiness, her sweet nature. Patsy thought about how it felt to love Delia. At this, her heart swelled and she let out a soft moan.

> We’ll figure this out.  
> See you soon. ;)

….

The morning of the first department meeting of the term, just after everyone had returned from their Christmas holidays in snowy resorts areas, tropical beach locals, and--for some less fortunate--the MLA, Dr. Mount had been running a bit late. 

She had taken a late flight back from LA and was feeling a little less perky than usual. She’d just barely made it to campus in time to get to the meeting—which, of course, as chair of the department, she was expected to lead. 

Dressed in a short, black a-line skirt, a crisp white button-up blouse, and black round-toe pumps, hair in a sweepy bun, and carrying a large, leather tote…Dr. Mount rushed into the elevator on the ground floor.

Just one floor up, the elevator stopped to pick up another passenger: a perky and smiling Dr. Busby whose bright eyes widened when she saw Patsy already in the elevator.

“Dr. Busby,” the senior colleague nodded and smiled—a simple, efficient, yet warm acknowledgment. 

“Morning!” Delia chirped. She was slightly out of breath, her cheeks looked warm. She, too, had been running late and so had just completed the mile-long walk from the small cottage she was renting at record speed.

Though a bit flustered by Patsy’s presence, Delia tried to act casually unaffected. Things were okay with Patsy now, though they hadn’t properly talked about anything yet, but “casually unaffected” was a disposition that did not come naturally for Delia. Even so, trying her best to pull it off, Delia stepped into the elevator and swung around to press the “door close” button so that they could be on their way.

As she turned her back slightly to Patsy and reached for the button, the tread of Delia’s shoe caught awkwardly on the textured floor of the elevator, throwing her off balance and prompting her to drop her bag and fall backwards—legs twisting, arms flailing about—right, as it turned out, in the direction of the woman--the chair of her new department, academic star and generally all around cool person--whom she had spent years admiring, months desiring, and, as it turns out, was now just inches away from being intimate with.

Circumstances to date had cruelly interfered, but they were now apparently making up for that.

Always quick to notice something amiss, Patsy braced herself when she saw Delia trip and prepared to break her fall. Bending her knees to accommodate the Dellia’s natural proximity to the ground, Patsy assumed a slight crouching position (knees together because of the narrowness of her skirt). She thrust both arms forward.

Her quick thinking and coordination in this moment were a thing of beauty. When Delia reached her, Patsy deftly hooked her arms under Delia’s and prevented her from hitting the floor. And then things got awkward.

Intending to help Delia to her feet just as adeptly as she had caught her, Patsy fully extended her legs--propelling both herself and Delia up and forward. She almost pulled this off, except that in her zeal to restore order to the moment, Patsy thrust a bit too hard.

To stop their forward momentum and to keep from unceremoniously slamming both of them into the front of the elevator, Patsy thrust her left arm straight out and pressed it into the front wall of the elevator carriage—also, as it turned out, accidentally activating the emergency stop with the heel of her hand. As she did this, her right arm released from under Delia’s and closed securely around the front of her—just under Delia’s breasts.

When both were finally again standing on their own two feet, Patsy breathed a sigh of relief, and Delia announced, “Well, that was something. If the Russian judges don’t give us at least a 5 for that, I, for one, will be deeply disappointed!”

God, she was adorable, Patsy thought to herself. 

Patsy’s left arm was still pressed against the forward wall of the elevator, holding them both in place, but her right forearm was not only wrapped tightly around Delia’s stomach, it was also bearing the full weight of both of Delia’s breasts. Her right cheek was pressed against Delia’s left. Patsy took a long, deep, calculating breath.

Feeling Patsy inhale slowly, deliberately, Delia herself suddenly became aware that not only was she being held close by this glorious woman, the entirety of Patsy’s torso was pressed against her back. There was hardly any part of them from the waist up that was not pressed against the other in some way. Delia could smell the sweet peppermint of the taller woman’s breath.

Oh, my god, Delia thought. She was afraid to move, afraid even the slightest movement might break whatever magical spell had contrived for this to happen. And then, as if it were an automatic reflex over which she had no control, she found herself turning slightly towards Patsy’s warm breath.

Trying not to draw any more attention to the fact that an impressive, quick-thinking save on her part had been transformed into an intoxicating embrace, Patsy slowly released the tension in her arm and, with it, her hold on Delia. She then disengaged the “emergency stop” button she had accidentally activated moments earlier.

Patsy might have been trying to find a swift but delicate way out of this embrace, but Delia wasn’t done with Patsy. 

Delia grabbed Patsy’s wrist to stop her retreat and wound her arm back around her, hugged it firmly to her chest and then laced her fingers through Patsy’s, and guided her hand lower, until Patsy’s long fingers were just inside the waist of Delia’s pants.

Patsy felt the elevator moving again and thought to herself, Not here. Not here. Not now. Shit. No, don’t stop.

Just. Yes. Please. Please. Don’t stop, Delia was much less cautiously thinking to herself. She was dizzy and felt her legs getting weak.

Both of them were becoming breathless, though they hadn’t so much as kissed. Patsy held Delia firmly but tenderly from behind with her right arm—the other was still secure against the inside of the elevator and held them in place about a foot from the wall. Pasty’s hot cheek and soft lips pressed against the warm spot right in front of Delia’s ear. Her breath there made Delia ache all over.

God, she smelled so sweet, Patsy thought—like butter and honey and flowers. Her long, soft fingers slid another inch below the waist of Delia’s pants, lightly grazing the smooth skin just inside her right hip bone. Her head and heart were both thumping with the intensity of her desire.

I. Oh god. This is... This is…

Patsy's fingers moved lower still inside the waist of Delia's pants, grazing the side of Delia's hip, while her thumb lightly caressed the area where Delia's underwear met the top of her leg.

Suddenly, Delia spun around to face Patsy and rose to meet the taller woman's breath. She paused there, looking first at Patsy's lips and thinking about how she had craved feeling them against her own for so long now. Delia thought about what they would taste like. And then she looked up. 

Delia’s blue eyes found Patsy’s and connected with an intensity neither of them had ever before experienced. And then, as if on cue, both their eyes narrowed as they smiled. Their systems flooded with oxytocin. Their skin tingled. Their hips pressed together.

“Hi,” Delia said, as she reached behind Patsy and casually slipped her hand up the back of her shirt, spreading her fingers and pressing them against the soft warmth of Patsy's skin just beneath her bra strap...as if she had done it a thousand times before and it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do so. 

“Hi,” Patsy replied with a lopsided grin that made Delia want never to ever be anywhere else on earth.

Delia broke away from Patsy’s beautiful, warm gaze, leaned in toward the lower side of Patsy’s cheek, and pressed her lips to her senior colleague’s warm neck. At this, Patsy arched her head back slightly and a soft breath escaped her throat. Delia lingered—lips softly and slowly exploring the thin skin Patsy had just exposed to her.

They were both consumed by the moment. And then, almost as abruptly as she had turned to face Patsy, Delia withdrew her hand from under the woman’s shirt, pushed her away gently and somewhat teasingly by the hips, cleared her throat, and said, “I’m afraid this is where we get off.”

The elevator bell rang. Red-faced and flustered, they both turned to face the opening door.

…

By the time Drs. Mount and Busby got there, most of the rest of the faculty were already assembled in the meeting hall for the department meeting. Delia entered the room first and set her things down at the end of the second row of chairs nearest the door. She took her seat and began to look for her phone in her bag.

Just a few moments after Delia entered the room, an apparently fully composed and focused Dr. Mount walked through the door and placed her bag on the table next to the podium in the front of the room. The room became noticeably quieter. Delia stopped breathing.

“Right, let’s get started.” Dr. Mount pulled a legal pad out of her bag. “First order of business, approval of the minutes from last meeting. Can I get a motion?”

Delia’s eyes avoided her senior colleague at first...as if seeing her now, in this space, was the forbidden act. When she did finally look up, however, and found Patsy, Dr. Mount, standing there, commanding the room as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened between them, she couldn’t look away.

Delia’s heart was still racing, only now—less than two minutes removed from the unexpected, glorious encounter—as she watched her senior colleague conduct herself with such familiar measure and poise, she was starting to question what had just happened.

Had she really just slipped her hand up the back of Patsy’s shirt? Had she actually, just minutes before, felt Patsy holding her, felt her tension, felt her poised on the brink of losing herself? Had she finally, after so long, felt Patsy’s, Dr. Mount’s, that woman’s cheek, those lips pressed against her face? Had that hand been pressed against her, had it actually been just inside her pants?

Delia brought her own hand to her left cheek and looked down at her lap as if there might be some physical trace of the encounter that could answer these questions for her. Without directing them to, her eyes closed.

Yes. Patsy’s hand had caressed the delicate skin at the top of her leg. That thumb on that gorgeous woman’s hand, those fingers—now being used to add emphasis to her senior colleague’s words—had touched her skin. And yes, Delia had kissed that long, beautiful neck as they held each other close. Those hips had pressed tightly and longingly against these.

Startled by the intensity of her physiological response to this recollection, Delia feared she may have just moaned softly out loud. She flushed red, looked right and left quickly, and then closed her eyes again and shook her head. No matter what had just happened, she could not let herself forget that she was now in a nearly quiet, packed room of her colleagues.

Delia opened her eyes and looked back to the front of the room. Dr. Mount was watching her while speaking about the college’s budget deficit and the impact it was likely to have on the department in her bright, husky, RP-tinged voice. Their eyes met, and Patsy smiled warmly at Delia, as if she had noticed her detachment from the room but had found their eye contact reassuring that Delia was okay. This was not a dream. This was all happening.

….

When Patsy finally made it back to her office after the meeting, she locked the door and collapsed into the chair behind her desk. She was slouched down in the chair so deeply that her neck bent awkwardly against its back and her arms stuck out haphazardly over the sides. She moaned as if she had a toothache. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and held them there. 

Just then, she heard a knock at her office door and quickly sprang up, smoothing the front of her blouse and skirt as she did.

The door opened and her administrative assistant, Derrick, handed her a stack of agendas for the search committee meeting that Dr. Mount had asked him to copy.

Shit, Patsy thought to herself, remembering the next meeting she was meant to lead. 

Patsy lowered the agendas onto her desk and glanced at her watch. She had just 45 minutes to regroup and get ready for that. She breathed deeply in and then out, willing her heart to settle a bit so that she could focus. Newly determined to maintain her professionalism in spite of her recent slip in the lift, Patsy left her office and went to the ladies room to freshen up.

Minutes later, a more focussed and resolute Patsy was walking efficiently back to her office to gather her papers and her thoughts for the search meeting. As she approached the meeting room just a few doors down the quiet administrative hallway, she heard a familiar voice.

“So…” the voice said quietly.

Patsy looked over her shoulder out of the corner of her eye. “Delia…” she said softly. She felt her heart rush and skip a beat. Patsy drew a deep breath and turned to face the approaching woman. “Let’s just get through this next mee…” she pushed forward.

But before she could finish, Delia grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into the adjacent meeting room. Once inside, door closed behind them, Patsy stood facing Delia. Neither of them spoke. 

Patsy searched Delia’s eyes for an answer to a question that hadn’t yet fully formed in her brain, as she had so many times with Delia. Why did Delia have this effect on her? 

Dr. Mount tugged at Patsy. She felt a little annoyed because of the challenge this was posing to her obviously already weakened resolve to keep her hands to herself, well--off of Delia at least. But Patsy was also thrilled and amused--she couldn’t believe the nerve of the delightful little woman before her. And then Delia smiled. 

Patsy’s eyes narrowed in response, and she realized that the decision had been made for her. And so, with just the tip of one finger pressed against the front of Delia’s shoulder and without losing eye contact, Patsy walked Delia a few steps backwards towards the meeting table, expertly and gracefully pulled the chair behind Delia out of the way, hooked a finger into the waist of Delia’s pants, and drew her in, kissing her softly. 

Delia moaned...she couldn’t help it. Feeling Patsy's lips against hers was so much more intensely pleasurable than any sexual encounter she’d ever had. She never wanted it to end. 

Hearing Delia moan made Patsy shudder with delight. Goosebumps covered her arms as she bent her knees slightly and once again wrapped a firm arm around Delia, lifting her onto the table. Delia smirked at this and grabbed Patsy by the back of her bare thighs, slid her hands up the back of Patsy's skirt. 

"Well, hello," Delia thought to herself.

…..

By the time the rest of the committee arrived in the room for the meeting, Delia was seated at the far end of the table, red-faced and flush with happiness, her notes spread before her. 

She was only occasionally allowing herself to glance forward to the other end of the table where she and Patsy had finally, just moments before, completely recklessly consummated their desire for one another. The memory of what had happened still fresh, Delia could feel Patsy’s touch on her skin, smell her scent, and recall the glorious site of Patsy throughout the intimate encounter. It had been so intense and exciting that Delia was concerned that just looking at the place where it happened might cause her to moan.

Meanwhile, Patsy was in her office as the time for the start of the meeting came and went. Delia became concerned. A few more minutes passed, and just as Delia was thinking about getting up and checking on her to make sure she was okay, Patsy entered the room.

“Right,” Patsy said as she walked through the door, looking radiant. She set her bag in the chair at the head of the table. “I’m afraid I’ve just received some bad news” she said, smirking inappropriately. 

“The Dean has just phoned to tell me that we’re going to have to suspend the search. The budget cuts were always going to make this hire difficult for the college, but now the Board of Governors has just approved a new measure that will make it impossible.”

“So...thank you for all of your hard work, but I’m afraid it looks like we are going to have to put this search to rest for the year.”

Delia breathed a sigh of relief--she would not have to worry about Noelle’s campus visit or her possibly joining the faculty there. At least not this year. She kept her eyes down, lest she give away echoes of the intense insecurity and jealousy she had felt just days before about the whole Noelle-and-so-many-others-Patsy-had-been-with-who-seemed-to-be-everywhere-at-MLA situation. A situation she’d found so overwhelming, it had prompted her to flee the MLA as soon as she could. 

It all seemed kind of ridiculous now. But as someone who tended to be very comfortable with nearly anyone in any situation, Delia was repeatedly taken back that Patsy had this power over her.

Delia stared blankly at the table before her as she considered this effect of the compelling and endearing women she had pulled into this very meeting room only minutes earlier...this beautiful, strong, soft, brilliant woman who made every moment in her presence feel special and worth living again and again.

Dr. Mount was used to having such power over others. She was good at it. She was careful, compassionate, and generous with it. And she always found a way to use it to make others feel genuinely seen by her, a skill that made her intensely desirable even among those who, like Delia, otherwise prided themselves on their hardy and independent natures.

Patsy was watching Delia, thinking about how she longed to be against her. The moment they had just shared had been amazing and intense, but it hadn’t been enough. She looked briefly down at the table before her--where just minutes before she had felt Delia’s soft, beautiful warmth against her own--felt her insides lurch, and stifled a soft moan. 

As others started gathering their things to leave the room, Patsy lingered. She thought about how she had never felt so totally consumed by a person. And this, she was finding, though a little scary and uncomfortable at times, made the pleasure of loving Delia so much more. 

In that moment, Delia’s eyes softened and she smiled to herself. And then she looked up at the woman she adored and found her looking back. This gorgeous woman who held her heart so effortlessly...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [Outro for Chapter 25: Lauryn Hill "Cant Take My Eyes Off Of You" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkfKGzX7rEw)
> 
>  
> 
> [Full Mixtape](http://hypster.com/playlists/userid/5428535?7239181)  
> 


End file.
